


addendum

by ineternity



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Consent is Sexy, Demisexual Characters, F/F, F/M, Female Biology, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gender Dysphoria, Genderfluid Characters, Goes Downhill from the start Burn?, Hurt/Comfort, I am but a window and S12 is the massive brick come to smash me up, Long-ish Burn?, M/M, Mentioned Missy (Doctor Who), Moderate burn, Post-Episode: s12e02 Spyfall Part 2, Pre-Episode: s12e05 Fugitive of the Judoon, Resentment, Sacha Dhawan is very beautiful, Seriously there's quite a bit of hurt, Suicidal Thoughts, Telepathic Bond, Telepathy, Thoschei, awkward time lords, darkish!Doctor, is it technically slow burn though, it possibly is, older than your civilisation and infinitely more complex, so is Jodie Whittaker, there is a baby but whose is it? 👀
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 15:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 45,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22498099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineternity/pseuds/ineternity
Summary: After the events of the Timeless Children, The Doctor finds a very different Master from the one she had met on Gallifrey. This time he doesn't want to kill her or love her but something a lot darker, something she is unwilling to provide.She's more than tried it enough times herself but... What would it take to finally kill The Master?
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor & The Master (Dhawan), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 124
Kudos: 220





	1. one: lost and found

**Author's Note:**

> One piece of advice- read this slowly.
> 
> I know I like to devour stories and it's really tempting but let yourself enjoy this one, you deserve it.

‘I still can’t believe you agreed to travel with me.’

The Master grunts and shoves a hand stubbornly in his pocket. It’s quite a scene to behold the two of them standing, having a normal conversation in the middle of her TARDIS which has decided to activate her own personal mood lighting- a mixture of blues and deep purples.

‘You have something I need. It’s not an agreement, it’s a compromise.’

The Doctor raises her eyebrows, forms her mouth into an ‘O’ shape.

‘That’s new. I thought you were going for cool and impervious.’

He scowls, paces a few steps away from her. There’s silence for a few seconds, the ship’s engines whirring under their feet. She’s about to speak when she sees a tremor shoot through his hand.

‘It’s nothing.’

‘It doesn’t seem like nothing.’

‘You ignored me, jammed my perception filter in front of a patrol of Nazi soldiers, stole my TARDIS, left me on Earth for 77 years and exiled me to a parallel dimension. You’re right, I’ve had worse.’ It’s the first time she’s heard him be sarcastic in this body. Compared to her friend- ‘O’- its jarring, like she’s seeing a mask lifted on one of his many disguises.

‘77 years doesn’t mean anything to us.’

‘That’s what you thought in your last regeneration too.’

She shouldn’t have said that.

‘That’s not what I-‘ she calls after him.

He’s already gone.

She spends a couple of hours at the console, pacing, following energy trails around her display as they whizz around the galaxy. It’s all she can do whilst her friends are gone these days, a mask to keep her mind occupied instead of lying to them. Judging from the TARDIS’ complaints, The Master has already found his room- or what she had replaced his room with after they’d parted the last time. She can already guess what the damage will be like when she finds it again and prays that the ship’s self-reparation circuits are still active.

The Doctor is slipping into unconsciousness when there’s a small buzz from the display screen, an alert to warn her if one of the fam has ventured too far down the corridors into places she doesn’t want them poking. She pauses for a second, wondering if it’s worth it and grabs her jacket to follow up the alert.

He’s far in but traceable enough that the TARDIS can make an easy path for her. She eventually finds him sitting hunched over a step on the wardrobe’s spiral staircase, a large mass of assorted coats and various outfits picked up on her travels hanging messily on a steel rail on the platform beside him.

She reaches out with her mind. Finding no trace of him in the surrounding air, she edges her way up the stairs in the hope that he won’t shun her away like last time.  
Her friend stares coldly ahead, unblinking when she sits down on the step beside him, she spends a long ten seconds deciding where to put her hands before letting them rest awkwardly in her lap. What can she say? He’s grieving, like her, but she can’t help him like she’d help Yaz or Ryan or Graham. She doesn’t speak.

‘Let’s go somewhere.’

The Doctor blinks.

‘What?’ It comes out husky, almost a whisper.

‘You promised me we’d see every star. Let’s go, we can start now.’

‘I- did. Yes.’ The words don’t quite come out. It’s nothing compared to everything she wants to say to him now but there’s something in his eyes as he stares dead ahead that is desperate, frantic, like they’re running out of time.

‘You can choose. Pick somewhere.’

‘Vienna. The 18th century.’ His mouth curls happily at the edges, she’d expected him to scoff.

‘You really are a sop, aren’t you?’

She fakes a gasp. He chuckles, propping his head against the hand-rail, finally meeting her eyes with a sea of deep brown and-

Oh.

She’s smitten.

‘You’re not going in those clothes.’ He pulls himself up, offers her a hand. She tries her best not to dissolve into a large fleshy puddle as she takes it.  
‘Okay.’

A ha, that’s why he’d hidden himself in the wardrobe. 

They descend the stairs to one of the many small platforms, its one she hasn’t seen for a while so the dust in the air must be hundreds- if not thousands- of years old.

‘Pick something.’ He says.

She stares at the rails, trying to make sense of the mess of stimuli in front of her. There are too many objects in too many places for her to process. She starts with the first rail, selecting a small collection of suits from their hangers. 

One catches her eye. An extravagant shirt with frills protruding from the centre, paired with a sleek black bow-tie- did she really have a thing for bow-ties again?

‘How about this one?’

‘No.’ 

She tries again, picks out a long multicoloured coat and trousers. It’s eye-catching if anything and the orange on the lapels make her hearts pound.

‘This one.’

A look of disgust crosses his features. The look sparks a pit of shame in her stomach and she quietly apologises.

‘What about this one?’ A waistcoat, its dressy but the pin badges along the side give it a gleeful charm.

‘That is the most revolting thing I have ever seen, my dear.’

She sighs, roots around again and pulls out her last option. Before she can turn, he grabs the shirt from her, turns and crams it into the highest draw he can reach. 

‘Hey!’ the draw is too high for her to reach even when she stands on tiptoes and tries jumping. She doesn’t even need to look to see the smug satisfaction cross his face, he’s grinning from ear to ear. ‘That’s a dirty tactic.’

‘Shush. I’ve got something- don’t look so put out.’ He stumbles backwards as she clutches for the garment.

It’s a long green dress. The skirt looks pleated like a schoolgirl’s and around the waist of it there are some ribbon-y things and lots of stuff that seems important, but she can’t think why. He’s holding a jacket too, very much like his own but long, with sleek fitting sides.

She grabs for the jacket.

‘Ah, ah, ah. Try again.’

‘You don’t mean-‘

‘Yes, I do.’

He chuckles as her expression sours.

‘I’m not getting into that.’

‘Oh so now you’re backing out?’

A sigh.

‘No.’

He smiles.

‘How do these… work?’ She fiddles with what she assumes is a DIY kit around the waist.

Wide eyes meet hers again.

‘You mean you’ve never-‘

‘No, why would I?’

‘Are you always so incongruous Doctor?’

‘I can’t- I mean- uh-‘

‘I’ll help you.’ 

She can feel her face redden.

‘Unless you want to go undercover in rainbows and suspenders.’ He pauses. ‘Don’t answer that.’ 

Unusually, The Master halts. ‘May I?’

She nods.

He lays a hand on her chest and slowly slides it under the arm of her jacket, pulling away the soft fabric until she can see her own bare skin in front of her. It had been a long time since he’d done this and under very different circumstances that cause her cheeks to redden even further.

The jacket is on the floor now, she hadn’t noticed the other sleeve but now it’s just her thin, loosely-fitted shirt between him and bare skin she can’t figure out if she wants him to see or not.

His mind prods gently at hers, asking for consent to go further, to carry on unwrapping her. She lowers her shields slightly in response. Yes. Yes, you can, Go gently.

His hands work at exploring the gentle curves of her shoulders and her waist. The warmth of his hands through the fabric prompts a small gasp, he looks up. 

‘Take yours off too.’ She pleads. She sounds like a child.

He slips off his jacket, letting the heavy purple fall gently against the floor. Now they’re both even, like two raw nerves against a garden of fabric and silk and cloth.

His hands continue. She remembers her own, places them against his chest, exploring. He’s taller than her now but the way his soft eyes look gently at her makes her feel like curling into his arms like a small animal.

His hands probe at the hem of her shirt. Slowly she raises her arms so he can slip it over her head and she is still okay. She’s okay because he’s gentle and it feels so familiar, his hands are soft like feathers tickling as they pass her ears. 

So she stands. Waits. A gentle smile crosses his face. She expects him to look down and in a horrible moment cackle at her bare form but instead his eyes bore deep into hers like he’s exploring her again.

‘I’ve found you.’

‘Yeah.’

They stay like that for a long while. She notes his golden-brown skin and how beautifully it glows in the soft light of the room, how it feels when she, in turn, lifts the shirt over his head and caresses the canvas of soft hair and smooth skin along his chest.

It hurts a little when he eventually looks, a puzzled expression clouding his face. Something sinks inside her again, like when they’d argued in the console room. He’s seen what she is. She’s disgusting. Her own skin is disgusting to him like it is to her. She knows he can see all the blemishes now, the scars, every flawed expanse of her feminine body. Disgust. It’s disgust. She can’t get out now, she’s-

‘You have your bra on inside out.’

Her breath hitches.

‘What?’

He grins. She feels him gently lapping at her mind again.

‘The straps, they’re- let me show you.’

She sends him a puzzled thought.

‘Sit down.’

They come to rest on top of a box, The Doctor doesn’t know what’s in it but the wooden lid seems to be almost bursting open as they sit atop it. He crosses his legs, motions for  
her to turn so he can see the clasps along her back.

‘How could you move like this?’

‘I thought that was how you did it.’

She knows he’s smiling without looking.

‘You know you don’t have to be in pain all the time, you don’t have to choke yourself to be comfortable.’

‘It feels like I’m in pain all the time.’ She grumbles, ‘All these bodies ever do is hurt.’

He strokes her back, sending tingles to a place she didn’t even know she had. 

‘It doesn’t have to. There’s medicine for that, hot water bottles, chocolate.’

‘Mmm…’ She hums.

He unclasps her bra and The Doctor almost faints from the relief. She fills up her lungs with air for the first time in a while and sinks back down onto the lid of the box. The Master chuckles.

‘What was it like, when did the pain go away?’

The ministrations continue, she feels his hands around her again, smoothing large circles into her waist.

‘I bled. A lot. There were days I couldn’t leave my TARDIS. I didn’t know you could stop it, so I sat and hurt until I ran out of food. I thought that’s what these bodies did.’ He hesitates and The Doctor’s heart bleeds out in the silence. ‘I used to screw myself into a ball because I thought I was weak. I wasn’t. You’re not weak for hurting.’

‘What stopped you hurting?’ It’s little more than a whisper now.

He pulls away from her and thinks for a long time until she has to force herself back into his hands to make him touch her again.

‘Time.’

She sees his hands in front of her again as he offers her the straps.

‘Push your hands through there. Tell me if it feels uncomfortable.’

She obliges and the cage adjusts itself around her chest again but this time it is light, like it is pulling her into herself with a small but insistent persuasion. The clasp fastens and his fingers find themselves unoccupied.

A comfortable silence falls and she is suddenly aware of the room around her again, the smell of the clothes strewn across rails, the natural yellow glow of the room, the large staircase beside them, his hands around her waist, larger than she’d known them to be before.

She thinks to herself how they look together. If the garish coats had eyes would they choke in revulsion or would it be warm, would they look right instead? More thoughts appear, she catches one in the air.

‘Koschei.’

He appears over her shoulder.

‘Yeah?’

‘I think I’m ready for that dress now.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it :) 
> 
> Author's Notes:  
> -The wardrobe is loosely based on the one used by Ten in the Christmas Invasion  
> \- This is assuming Dhawan!Master is post Missy which I'm gonna assume is true because Chibs won't give us any continuity (grr!)  
> \- This is also in a Universe where Time Lord with those sorts of parts have biological nuisances like periods  
> \- I wrote this after a prompt from my IRL friend but it is also for Resa_Saso and Melkur_Mistress who I admire from afar on Twitter  
> -I also wrote this all in one sitting and I think it's the fastest I've ever typed (for comparison it took me 5 months to write a 6000 word essay and 2 hours to write this)  
> \- After all the Thoschei content we have been getting I need about 6 months to actually absorb what actually happened, it has taken me this long to absorb Spyfall


	2. two: killing him (softly)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again stranger. What a way for us to meet again...

It’s six months after Gallifrey that she decides to find him. Some part of her, she supposes, clinging on to a little shred of a night shared in Vienna.

The dress had disappeared from her wardrobe after she’d met The Master again- the rooms rearranging themselves, making it impossible for her to find her way back to those little spaces they had sat together. She hadn’t tried at first, the anger still so new and bristling inside her, but over time The Doctor begun to search for reminders of him. Little pieces of memory like shrapnel from a bomb when she had been loved and held.

The planet is dirtier than she remembers, every street packed with partygoers dressed to the teeth in dinner suits and waistcoats like the dingy oil sodden land beneath their feet were an afterthought. She apologises- keeps apologising- as she slips past the crowds, out of the way of repugnant street vendors and towards bright flashing city lights in the centre of the sprawl. It’s a long way from the finesse and nuance of Earth’s renaissance, ten million light years away in fact- and so, _so_ alien.

She narrows it down to one street, a pulsing, swaying road heaving with humanoid creatures- or beings she assumes have a head, two arms and two legs. Some of their languages the TARDIS doesn’t translate, she assumes it’s out of spite, so she walks towards the areas with the largest number of them and ignores the protests in her head. After walking for a while, the hum of the city dies back a little, segueing into moderately paced club beats and cabaret soundtracks. The neon still fizzes in the atmosphere of the street, polluting it with loud yellows and obscene pinks, enough to make her choke up empty air.

She walks towards the place her mind is screaming at her not to go, hushes the stream of insults appearing in her head and stops in front of a small entrance.

For somewhere like this it was oddly out of place. Nuanced and shabby chic as opposed to peeling and desecrated. It was too quiet for him, it didn’t advertise or boast, just sat unassuming in front of her like a taunt. She knocks, for lack of a better means of entrance, and is greeted with a cloud of smoke. A woman’s face looks back at her. The Doctor makes a note of the tattoos on her slim arms and calculates her chances of survival. She’s waved in eventually after pleading her case (lies, hard to believe but the figure has a dead look on her face and areas of skin that make her plead a little more pathetically).

It doesn’t take long to find him, though his usually pristine jacket is unrecognisably singed and torn. She orders a drink and keeps her distance, watches him hunch over the counter for a few minutes before shuffling along the bar.

‘Hello stranger.’

He doesn’t react and a jolt of something runs through her. She shuffles, suddenly uncomfortable on the bar stool

After an eternity the Master raises his head to look, seemingly through her and to the wall behind where she is sat.

His hair has grown into messy curls and there are black outlines to his eyes, he has drawn small wings beside his eyelashes. She notes a scattering of glaring cuts around his mouth. Neither of them speak.

‘If you’re going to blank me, I might as well walk the twenty miles back to the TARDIS.’

She waits, he stays still.

The Doctor sighs and feigns getting up. Abruptly fierce eyes dart to meet hers.

‘Stay.’

She sits back down, clasps a hand round her glass.

‘I’m only staying if you talk to me.’

He is silent and she is considering pretending to leave a second time when a large hand lands on her arm and clamps it to the table

‘Don’t leave me again.’

It’s more of a growl than a plea but she settles, straightens her back with an air of composure.

‘Then give me one reason why I came to find you. I could have walked away, and it would have been so much _easier_.’

He shuffles, meets her eyes again and sits upright to match her. She can see for the first time the streaks of glitter lining his eyelids, replacing the usual twinkle of his harrowing gaze with an artificial purple glimmer.

‘Who would ever appreciate you then? Kiss you, hold you, fuck you- ‘

‘You’re a fantasist.’ She spits, slaps his hand away from where it’s gripping her arm.

A pained laugh escapes him, revealing the coarse, chewed appearance of his lips.

‘Right for once my dear Doctor…’ Its mocking. She shivers in disgust at the term of endearment.

‘Why are you here, Master?’

‘That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out, Doctor. Why am I here? Why is anyone here, if we all just...’ he makes a smashing gesture with his fist, slamming it into the bar with force enough to crack its thin painted surface. ‘It’s all- ‘ the barmaid casts her a disapproving eye, ‘Entropy.’

He hunches over, energy leaving and entering his now shaking form. A moment of silence before furious eyes settle on her again.

‘We all _die_. Even I die, sometimes.’

She opens her mouth but his finger flies to cover her lips, other hand outstretched, clawed like a predator’s.

‘And I have- I have tried to live in-in’ he stutters, voice cracking, crescendo-ing ‘In _this_.’ He claws at his chest with the outstretched hand, grasping at the taut skin beneath his clothes. ‘But I have been burnt, I have had my flesh ripped away again and again and I survive it all because I _have_ to live- that’s my life-‘ he breathes, ‘and it is not mine.’ A pause. ‘It’s not mine. It’s not mine. It’s not mine-‘

He’s whimpering softly under his breath, oxygen starved and there is moisture forming in the corner of his eyes. She watches with something akin to horror as his head descends to meet the table once more. The moisture is coming quickly now, though she can’t see the tears she can just glimpse bright makeup smudging slowly down his cheeks.

‘Master I-‘ she starts before realising she doesn’t know what to say. Instead she watches as choking sobs shudder through his body, driving it into the edge of the countertop. Her body fills with a familiar disgust, bile rising at her own carelessness and she’s reminded of Tecteun’s still face watching, just watching, as she’d died the first time.

Beside her the sobs become quieter, giving way to small sniffs and broken whimpers. The hand not gripping his face clutches at an empty glass, nails bending against its thick form. The Doctor moves closer, slides a gentle hand through his overgrown curls and strokes softly. He stills, lets the tears roll slowly from his eyes to where they drip from his nose.

They stay like this for a while until she glimpses the last tear roll from his eyes. He turns his head to face her, she drops her hand to the side of his face, tracing his jawline through thick stubble

_I cherish you. You are safe here._

Shallow dimples form on his cheeks. She can hear the contented hum his mind is projecting although it is a thin veil for the screams behind it. A child’s voice is there, mixing amongst thousands. It’s a horrible, bone-chilling cry of terror, the child is screaming in fear

_Let me take you home._

She feels his shoulders tense a little under her touch, but the energy quickly evaporates. He replies softly, echoing her words from earlier.

_Give me one reason why I should let you._

_You’re my responsibility-_

_No._

_You’re safer-_

_No._

_Let me care for you. I need you to know that you are loved and safe._

She almost says his name- his real name, then stops. There are millions of things she needs to tell him, millions of questions still to ask but so few moments in which he is open to her, she can’t risk closing their connection too soon.

_Why didn’t you kill me on Gallifrey?_

Gallifrey. Adrenaline comes quickly, coursing, pulsing like a base reaction. The Doctor breathes, takes in a gasp of the thick club air and forces it back out, grips at the chair with white knuckles

_I told you to kill me, Doctor._

_Why didn’t you kill me?_

_I deserved it._

_I murdered our people, is that what you wanted?_

She steadies herself against the bar, whipping her hand back from him and using it to ground herself.

_No._

_Shame._

_You’re not provoking me into this._

_Really? It looks like I’m doing pretty well at the moment._

_Master._

_There are knives here. I know you can use them. I’ll make it easy for you, I’ll lie-_

_Master._

_Drugs too. You could say it was an accident._

_Stop it!_

He winces as she hits him with a wave of force.

_Good. Again._

The Doctor relinquishes her grip on the chair and scowls. Bites back frustration. He’s looking at her again with those stupid, daring eyes. _Daring_ her to react. _Daring_ him to open the door to the vault. _Daring_ him to pull the trigger.

‘You are loved.’ She says out loud. He groans, slams his forehead to the countertop and grunts again when the noise reaches his ears. ‘I just wish you’d stop being a fucking prick about it.’

He chuckles, it’s hollow and she hates how empty it sounds. The makeup has set on his face in beautiful smeared marks that make his cheeks glow in the subdued light. She glances around, catching sight of the empty tables around them and the cautious way the barmaids cast side-eyes in their direction.

‘Come on.’ It comes out less authoritative than she would have liked, more of a sigh than a command. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

She shifts from her chair, hating the way her feet thump as they fall the short distance to the floor. The bar is beginning to hum with the noise of well-dressed partygoers of all species though she can’t hear what they’re saying. The Doctor distracts herself momentarily from The Master’s hunched figure, taking in the sweet aroma of the place. The bar’s shoddy exterior seems completely foreign compared to the way air hangs inside it, hot and heavy, like the heat you’d feel in an old car driving alone down a wide road in the dark. She can remember that- somewhere in a past life, her eighth or ninth maybe- although the memory is skewed, the picture off with the sound. He stirs in her head again.

_You don’t need to ‘save me’ Doctor, this isn’t missionary._

_Why Vienna._

_What?_

_You held me. You told me the pain would go away. You said, ‘let’s go.’ ‘Every star’._

In the silence between she projects warmth towards him. The glow takes him by surprise and suddenly he’s choking on thin air, eyes darting to hers, wide.

_You said-_

_‘I’ve found you’._

_Find me again. Please. Hold me._

They move at the same time. Her stepping forward, him turning to meet her gaze.

_All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand._ He offers.

_Thy heart is sorely charged._

He laughs in response, warm breath hitting the side of her cheeks

_What is done cannot be undone._

She grabs hold of his hand, presses a kiss into the top of it and keeps it there, closing her eyes in silent prayer.

_What is there to pray to, love?_

She smiles.

_I asked you to kill me._

_I will kill you softly then._

The air softens between them, friction slipping away. He realises- she notes- that he hasn’t the energy to fight. There is no energy left in his pliant hand nor any limb.

The room’s volume spikes again, loud, untranslatable and she senses the change in the air. The Master sighs, his body crumpling slowly over itself on the outbreath, revealing a large gash to his side.

Her mind scrambles but she finds her hands are already clutching his torso, shouldering his dead weight.

‘I’ve got you. I’ve got you.’

He gives a small hum against her chest and sinks further into her, eyes fluttering shut.

The TARDIS tugs at the back of her head in alarm and tries to cushion the wave of grief that washes over her.

Are you going to help me carry him?

The strain at the front of her mind eases a little, lessened by the familiar aroma of engine oil and the mechanical warmth of the TARDIS’ core.

Sentimental fool, she thinks as she rearranges the body before her, tucking her arms underneath him and lifting.

It’s a twenty mile walk back to the TARDIS but as the ghost of a smile crosses his lips she is amazed at how quickly it goes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They're both dumbasses, okay?
> 
> I didn't plan for this to be more than one part but my mind led me to strange places under quarantine and so I'm here now. I have many things to say about this chapter and I'd love to make a completely separate book explaining them... Let's see. (:D) I love your comments and I love the moment I post anything because I know it's given someone somewhere a bit more serotonin to function with. So, remember you are human, stay healthy and stay comfortable.


	3. three: they were the universe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wakes, she stays- for once.

It takes her far longer than she hoped to carry his body, the TARDIS withdrawing her cooperation halfway through the journey. She presumes it’s because she passes the planet’s ‘red light’ district, a crowded alleyway she has to avert her eyes from as she walks by. She can hear the ship’s complaints in the back of her head, like a prudish parent scolding her for staying out too late. Not that she’d ever had a real parent- or that the perceived passage of time concerned her.

The Doctor just about makes to the ship’s medical wing before the planet’s defence alert system breaches the hull. Despite her best efforts, the alarm begins to blare through the speakers. Traditional, claxon-y with hints of barely supressed terror.

The Master stirs in her arms as she lays him across the bed, smiling slightly as the alarm increases in volume. She doesn’t ask what he’s done to warrant an inter-galactic search party practically falling over themselves to chase him off-world. The TARDIS is far gone in a few seconds, a neighbouring galaxy, but the noise is still there. _Persistent bastards_.

It’s about ten minutes before the noise stops. She has to make sure their pursuers are gone before returning to the bed. When she returns, he’s lying in the same position, eyes barely open, gazing exhaustedly at the bare ceiling.

The first thing she does is set the scanner working whilst searching the room for what supplies remain. Funny how her previous bodies had never thought to replenish the equipment, leaving many of the cupboards bare apart from scraps and empty bottles.

_Contact._

There isn’t a response.

She sighs, glances into the subdued brown of his irises as they stare dead ahead, unblinking, feeling all of a sudden like an unwilling carer. It’s hard to make out where his face begins beneath the streaks of smudged makeup. He looks like a beautiful canvas, every colour blending together like dawn on a Monet painting.

The drips closest to her attach with minimum effort, the container beneath them filled with enough morphine to last a few hours. He’d scoff at her use of such a _human_ drug, perhaps refuse it if he was feeling stubborn.

It was Graham that had convinced her to keep some on board- ‘ _You can never have enough of the stuff, Doc. Grace used to treat me with it when I was ill._ ’

Strange really, that this body had picked up so much from Graham’s carer in the short time they’d spent together. Grace had been so blindingly bright for a human, full of zeal and curiosity. The Doctor had seen that and built it like a fortress around her, only now that fortress had broken apart and he had been the one to do it.

Right, yes. Him.

The Doctor starts with the cloth closest to her, dampening it slightly under the tap before touching it lightly against his thick stubble. Long eyelashes flutter slightly at the touch and she can feel cool breath release against her fingers as she strokes the material in small circles over the dirt below.

She pulls back after a minute, regarding how the colourful stains swirl away as she washes the fabric. The long eyelashes are shut when she returns, miniscule twitches betraying his awareness of the cloth as she continues to work, sweeping away tear trails and stroking the kohl from long curling hair.

There’s quiet in the room, the soft buzz of mechanical life blanketing a lukewarm silence. She surveys his face properly whilst she cleans. Looking not at a snarling antagonist but a broken friend.

It’d been a while since this body had appeared last, a matter of a few months in Earth time, but lifetimes since he’d been so still in front of her. The Master’s previous bodies had retained a flighty, uneasy energy that this one seemed to lack. He was rough- certainly- edgy and mischievous but with no sense of reckless self-preservation, no plan to save himself, take over the universe etcetera, etcetera.

This body seemed to have a knack for getting itself in a mess, a bloody mess at that. But no matter the dirtiness that seemed to cling to it, his face was all curves, making it easy for her fingers to glide from one part to another, softly brushing away more and more of the offending substance.

Though the stains of dirt and makeup have disappeared, she barely recognises the face underneath. There are old eyes beneath those eyelids and a quiet aura of ‘just on the edge of something’- what that _something_ is, she doesn’t know but it’s unnerving and enough to create a tortured edge to this face, one Missy had substituted with longing and quiet need.

From across the room, the scanner bleeps.

There’s a collection of red on the screen screaming with painful urgency, each section glowing a light scarlet and flashing a million different warnings at her. She starts from the beginning, scoffing slightly at labels like ‘high blood pressure’, likewise watching with growing concern at how long the list of damages seems to be.

The report is thorough, clinical. It picks up the strain on his hearts, liver damage she wishes she hadn’t already guessed at and the injuries littered across his exhausted form- plus an extensive list of cuts, scratches, bruises and burns.

His shirt unbuttons easily, and she is left staring at a wall of scars. The bin in the corner catching her just in time as she retches. Despite their species’ healing abilities, many of the wounds are set deep. There’s one across his abdomen, a thick line of red that distorts with muscle. It’s old, the scanner tells her it’s consistent with the lash of a bullwhip, painful but quick healing with the right equipment.

It feels like an invasion of privacy, looking at the section of the report containing his DNA scans. It’s disgusting how she can make out the area that belongs to her, the strands limiting his artron energy sewn into genes like a subtle patchwork. She sees the other parts too, remnants of times he hadn’t been in a Time Lord body. Some parts make her smile with sickly recognition, others carry with them a silent horror that is quickly stashed away.

The Doctor frowns. The sequence is standard for a Time Lord apart from a small section at the end of the screen, a triple helix- yes- but broken somehow, damaged. A little like the cross-section of Barton’s DNA Yaz and Ryan had managed to capture during their encounter on Earth.

Before she can click further into the display, The Master wakes beside her, groaning slightly as he stirs.

‘Don’t move. It’ll make it worse.’

He ignores her and raises himself slowly upright before wincing and falling the distance back to the bed.

‘Told you.’

There’s a laden silence between them as she finishes dressing the wounds, tries not to think about the countless others she had seen littering his lower body. Upon closer inspection, the bullwhip lash she had seen earlier is deeper and redder than the scanner had suggested- lying deep enough into his stomach to create a fleshy red slit. She imagines him doing something irreparably stupid, like pissing off an intergalactic lion-tamer.

‘You’ve had some scrapes in this.’ She mutters absentmindedly. ‘Plans for universal domination gone wrong, was it?’

‘Dachau.’

The air in the room disappears. The Doctor chokes.

‘I’m -m sorry.’ She stutters.

The Master’s eyes drift away from hers and fix themselves to a spot on the blank ceiling.

‘Yeah.’

Suddenly she doesn’t know what to do with her hands. Usually she might flap them around, just to hear Yaz giggle but now she feels silly and shallow and superficial.

A horrible weight settles itself inside her throat and drops like a stone. The room is cold, pressing in tight to the back of her head. She waits for something- anything- to occur to her to make it better.

‘I was wrong- I didn’t know.’

‘You had the privilege not to know.’

‘I- ‘

‘They put scars on my body for the colour of my skin. They put gas in my lungs and kicked me when I didn’t die.’ The Master sits up properly, stretching his spine to its full height. ‘I don’t have blonde hair and white skin, Doctor. Or did you forget that?’

Out of the corner of her eye she sees him tugging at a drip she’d forgotten about. It disconnects easily.

He surveys the room wearily, raises an amused eyebrow at the dressings lining his torso and pushes off from the bed.

She doesn’t speak as he leaves the med-bay, leaving a trail of plasters and wires in his wake.

-

They meet- much by accident- around an hour later, her in a new jumper and jeans she’d dug down the back of a sofa for. Clothes that don’t smell of him

She spots him reclining on one of the chairs in the console room, leafing through a copy of ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’ at double-speed.

‘Dull.’ A sigh. ‘Don’t you have any more interesting books in here, Doctor?’ The book lands skewed open beside the chair, the pages scrunched.

‘What, _How Not to Kill People?_ Or does _Pacifism for Dummies_ take your interest.’

He ignores her, lets a familiar darkness wash over him.

‘I told you to kill me.’

‘Guh. This lever’s a bit stuck.’ She grunts, pretending to push at the large switch in front of her.

‘Doctor.’

‘Must have been a while since I oiled the place down.’

‘I left the old human behind. He died screaming your name.’ He pauses, ‘I thought you’d want to know that.’

‘I’m going to 51st century Byzantia. If you don’t want to come, I suggest you find somewhere else to chuck my books around.’

Another book lands crumpled on the pile.

‘Mm, yes. Byzantia’s the one with the Stet Radiation leak. The one that vaporises visitors on arrival?’

Her eyebrows knit themselves together. Pressing even more tightly inwards as he presses a finger into one of the bandages she had only just applied.

‘It seems you’re already an expert.’ A proximity alert sounds on the console, ‘Which means you know how crucial it is that I land this right. It would take a true genius to navigate past their security systems-‘

‘A shame there’s no one on board that matches that description.’

He hadn’t risen to the bait. She tries again.

‘Okay, fine. I’m not going to 51st century Byzantia.’

‘You don’t need to lie to me, love.’ The expression that only a few hours ago had been broken and worn is now splayed cheetah-like across his face. ‘Where are we actually going?’

‘Karn.’

The grin vanishes.

‘You’re not taking _me_ to-‘

The Master collapses against the chair.

‘I was wondering how long that would take.’ The Doctor flips off the piloting controls, landing the ship carefully in what _should_ be the planet’s main cave system. Luckily for him, the sedative had been the only thing in the cupboards- meaning she had no idea when it would wear off.

‘Sorry.’ She murmurs apologetically, hoisting her arms clumsily under his form. Even asleep, he emits a dense gloom that weighs heavy in the TARDIS air.

Like before, the ship helps her to take the weight. The walk is bearable, short. It’s not long before the sharp reds of Karn’s beaches stretch into muddy brown outcrops and sweeping rock arches.

After an hour the Doctor stops, exhausted, the mouth of the Sisterhood’s cave only a few steps away. Her patient is silent, weighing heavily on her for the second time in a day. Considering the Master hadn’t had a deep sleep in his life, it was a rare thing to see him so peaceful. A warm flutter sparks in her chest at that.

Her last body had parted with the Sisterhood on bad terms. Murderously bad terms. If she was right about this, then there was a slim chance Ohila might allow them refuge. If she was wrong, it would only be a matter of time before both of them were hunted from the planet.

She takes a deep breath, steps forward and knocks four times.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Publishing this right after the re-watch of Heaven Sent was like a punch in the gut. Ouch.
> 
> Your comments are so very much appreciated. They hold me to account on this thing. :D


	4. four: what she did next

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor asks the Sisterhood for help and comes to a painful compromise. The Master hurts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise if you were having a nice evening but this is an utter angst train. And now for the grand introduction of… what’s this?? pLOT????

The knocks reverberate through the cave, each knock returning to her ears as a deafening thud.

There is no reply. The Doctor takes a step forward.

‘You have great nerve coming here, Doctor.’

She halts, loosening her grip on The Master.

‘Ohila?’

‘Enter.’ The woman’s voice commands.

The cave lights up, suddenly ablaze with torches. Bitter faces of red and gold women shine in the darkness, projecting a suffocating aura of disapproval towards her.

‘You have something for us?’ The eyes of the Sisterhood move in unison, scowling as they survey the body.

‘No, he’s not- this isn’t-‘ She stutters awkwardly, grasping at words which won’t offend them.

‘You bring a monster to our refuge. We know his crimes.’

‘He’s under my guard.’ A silence hangs in the air, ‘He’s a prisoner on the TARDIS.’ She adds hastily.

‘Then why come here?’

‘You granted me refuge before. I promise you, this was my last resort.’ She sneaks a glance down at his sleeping form, spots a fresh cut weeping red onto the floor. A flash of panic jolts through her.

‘We seek solitude from the clutches of men. He is an oppressor who would see us suffer.’

‘Then heal him. Please. You know he’s less destructive alive than dying. The universe knows.’

‘ _We_ will not heal this creature.’ Hundreds of voices spit the words, their harsh whispers clashing against one another.

Her focus shifts to the audience of hungry eyes, their faces are tense, seething with barely contained rage. She schools her next words into rigid respectability.

‘Then I seek only your help, Ohila.’

The woman she has known virtually all her conscious lives pinches her mouth into a reluctant smile. She knows those eyes. Since the beginning, Ohila’s piercing, unrelenting gaze has remained the same. Those same eyes she has looked into many times before regard her again now.

‘Leave sisters. Let me speak with The Doctor alone.’

The women’s scowling faces fade into the gloom of the cave and she is left facing her old ally again. Ohila has grown visibly older since their last meeting, pronounced grey hairs now framing a weathered face. Only the matriarch’s stare remains young, sharp, untrusting.

‘Your actions are foolish and naïve. You would do well not to make such a request again.’

‘I wouldn’t come here lightly.’

Around them the cave swells with cold air. The temperature drops, making the torches flicker. An unspoken question crawls into the air between them.

‘I will examine him. Nothing more.’

The Doctor’s body sags with relief. She turns towards the small plateaux in the cave’s centre and carefully lowers The Master’s body onto its surface before returning her attention to Ohila.

‘You owe us a debt Doctor.’ The sister continues. ‘We did not anticipate your presence a second time after your actions on Gallifrey.’

‘Whatever it is, I’ll do it.’

A sigh.

‘Go, Doctor.’

‘I want to be with him.’ Her protest is met with an exasperated snort.

‘I cannot work in the presence of an imbecile. Now go, he will be under the Sisterhood’s protection.’

Both Ohila and The Master vanish and she is left in the entrance alone. The worry she had been carrying before grows heavier, now pulling down like a stack of bricks in her stomach.

Night passes slowly. The Doctor paces.

At first she explores the caves, scouring for any trace of him. The winding paths and high cliffs are deserted, with only the sound of an occasional breeze blowing through them and a trail of wooden torches to fill the space. Whenever she discovers a new hollow or tunnel, the caves rearrange themselves behind her. Rocks that hadn’t been there before suddenly block her passage and she is forced to take a new path.

It takes a small eternity to decipher the layout of the place underneath the swapping and changing. She knows the Sisterhood are watching because before long she is back in the entranceway, the small piece of paper she had been using to draw on ‘lost’ along the way.

The night continues.

The thought occurs to simply find the TARDIS and skip forward a few hours though she can’t guarantee the ship will allow her to come back.

Karn’s atmosphere is too humid, too suffocating for sleep so she walks. Away from The Master, to a small outcrop she had visited bodies before. The plants that had once littered the surface are gone, withered into a fine dust that blankets the ground.

She looks up. Karn’s twinkling constellations cast a warm red glow upon the planet’s surface, an edgy, dangerous red. The sky reminds her of Sarah-Jane and the memories of easier times. Of Sarah laughing, of her in a stupidly long scarf, of crazy nights in labs and battling Morbius.

What would Sarah say now? Maybe she’d laugh. _Doctor, you’re being silly._ Of course she’d say that. The Doctor _was_ being silly, trying desperately to fix something that couldn’t be fixed. Hadn’t those been happier times? She’d known where they’d stood then. On separate sides playing each other like games. That was all they were, games. They were _fun_.

A few more hours pass and the surface of the planet begins to cool. As tiny beacons of sunlight begin to emerge from the wilderness, something tugs at the back of The Doctor’s mind. She sits up. The thing tugs again, more insistently.

‘Doctor.’

It’s Ohila’s voice.

‘Come. He is awake.’

It takes her half the time to get back to the cave. She enters at its mouth where sunlight streams overhead. The large entrance she had seen earlier is gone, replaced with individual rooms sitting either side of a large stony corridor. More magic, she supposes.

The tug is stronger now. She follows it onward toward a low stone archway, to where the pulling sensation is strongest.

The Doctor pauses in front of the arch. From inside the room she can hear what sounds like a guard dog. A low growling, almost inhuman, rumbles through the air. It takes her a moment to realise who it is.

‘Master?’

The sound stops. She pokes her head through the entrance.

‘ _Doctor_.’

The Master is sitting hunched over on the edge of a small bed, face twisted with his mouth in a fearful grimace.

‘How do you feel?’

‘Worthless.’ He chokes, voice trembling as he addresses her, eyes alighted with a renewed fury.

She inches further into the room and moves to rests her weight on the wall opposite him.

A tense beat passes. Both of them shift cautiously, waiting. The Doctor moves first, reaching into her pockets to bring out a small roll of bandages she’d packed from the supply cupboards back home.

‘I thought you might-‘

‘A prisoner on the TARDIS. A prisoner on Karn. A prisoner to you. I told you my intentions yet you insist on playing the hero.’

‘I have a duty of care.’ The words tumble out of her before she can stop them. Dead words. Stolen words. Words said to somebody already dead.

‘I am not your duty, Doctor.’ He spits, ‘I didn’t ask for your care.’

His speech is interrupted by a fresh wave of pain. The growling begins again. An unexpected spark of outrage alights in her stomach.

‘You destroyed our home planet. You’re a dangerous murderer and if you want me to respect your wishes, then you’ll have to earn that right.’

‘Pardon?’

‘You heard me.’

A roar tears from his throat. The Doctor flinches away a second too late.

Suddenly his hands are around her neck and she is flying backwards into red stone.

‘I am not your prisoner!’

Weathered hands squeeze tightly around her airway, stopping her strangled gasps. His large frame presses against her in a rough chokehold, strangling, squeezing, choking. Her whole body strains and flails in protest.

_I can’t let you leave me again._

‘Let me go.’

_I can’t._

A tortured yell escapes his lips. The pressure worsens. She can feel the nerve endings in her brain beginning to deaden, vision fading.

‘This is _my_ life! If you can’t kill me then leave me alone!’

_Let go of me._

Anger. That oh-so-familiar sick smile. Smiling rage.

‘I wonder how many times you can regenerate, Doctor? Let’s find out.’

The red around the edge of her vision darkens into thick black. She’s falling into it, falling into the dark…

‘Enough!’

Her airway clears and The Doctor gasps out, swallowing in gulps of air.

Ohila stands beside her, barely composed, fists clenched tightly at her sides. The Master is lying in a crumpled heap on the floor a few metres away, chest heaving.

Her respiratory bypass had failed.

She reaches up a hand to feel her neck, it meets with soft pained flesh. There will be bruising there in a few hours.

‘Thank you.’ She mouths.

‘You must be careful, Doctor. I bound a tracking charm to him. He can’t stray far from you now.’

The heap in the middle of the room begins to sob quietly.

Ohila paces across the floor.

‘You cannot and will not hurt her. Do you understand?’

After a second’s pause his figure stills, whimpering quieter with each sob.

‘Good.’

The cries fade into laboured breaths. She can feel the pain seeping out of him-, it’s twisted, dark, horrifying- and there is nothing she can do. Her oldest friend quivers against the floor like a wounded animal. The sight of him douses the fire of anger inside her gut with a new sickly guilt.

‘Come with me.’

A hand clamps her shoulder, tugging her away from him. The Doctor’s eyes dart to the shaking form in front of her as she is pulled from the room.

They walk a short distance down the rocky corridor, just out of earshot of the room. Ohila stops to compose herself.

‘He is dying, Doctor.’

The throbbing in her neck stops abruptly. _Dying_.

‘No.’ She shakes her head, ‘No he isn’t.’

‘The universe will _prosper_ , Doctor, and I will rejoice with my sisters.’

‘Tell me how.’

The healer sighs and pulls delicately at the hood on the back of her cloak.

‘It seems he has decided his fate and his body is complying.’ She waits for more, ‘I believe you already know what he wants of you.’

She swallows down a lump, ignores the tender sting.

‘Yes.’

‘Then take him away from this place. You have disrupted our peace with selfish whims. The Sisterhood will not see you return.’

-

The Master is silent as Ohila accompanies them both back to the TARDIS. He makes no attempt to run, instead fixing his stare on the rocky ground before them.

Her neck twinges every few minutes, forcing them all to break for a moment. She steals glances at him when they stop, taking in the tiny details of his face and the way his tension strung form shudders under the hot suns. It takes the three of them the better part of an hour to complete the journey, staggering forward in short bursts until she grinds painfully to a halt.

When they eventually reach the ship, The Doctor is the first to enter, placing one foot cautiously inside the console room. Ohila stands watch as The Master ghosts through the doors beside her.

‘Be careful, Doctor.’

‘Thank you.’

They nod to one another one last time before the ship’s doors close. The Doctor turns to the console, eyes scouring for a panicked second before she spots his hunched form leaning against one of the room’s yellow pillars.

She sets the co-ordinates without thinking, somewhere a long way from Karn, somewhere it will take the TARDIS a long time to get to.

They’re standing in silence again, the whir of engines humming softly in the background.

‘ _I’ve found you.’_ He had said.

The Doctor looks over at the figure in the corner and meets the cores of his dead eyes. The dark brown of them is glazed over, shallow.

And she has never felt so lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're welcome :)
> 
> As always thank you so much for commenting. I'm starting to get the hang of this thing!


	5. five: the man with the yellow eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2 months remaining.
> 
> Anchor. Kite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the late update! Got through some writers block with another one shot I posted this week called 'Muse'. I have hundreds (maybe even thousands) of story ideas if you ever want one, seriously I am bursting with prompts.
> 
> Thanks to all of you who keep leaving lovely comments on here, I really do cherish them!

2 months remaining.

The Doctor wakes to the shrill cry of the proximity alarm. It takes her the duration of the siren to realise she had fallen asleep on the floor of the console room.

After a few minutes of playing around with the controls, the alarm quietens and the screens return to their normal displays. It’s the same alarm that had followed the TARDIS from the planet she’d found The Master on.

Ugh.

She’s so tired.

There’s a stirring from within one of the doorways. The sound of slow, lumbered footsteps is muffled but recognisable. The Doctor turns away, occupies herself with fiddling uselessly at buttons and levers. The footsteps still.

In the reflection of the screen, she can see his outline slouched against the wall. Resting motionless as he watches her dance around the console. After a few minutes she plucks up the nerve to speak to him.

‘Good morning.’

There is no response. Every conversation has been the same as this- _‘I’m going to sleep now, Master’, ‘Which bedroom would you like, Master?’, ‘Can you see my sonic anywhere, Master?’_ \- it prompts something that feels like irritation to rise up in her gut.

‘I thought you’d want to go somewhere, I programmed the TARDIS to drift so we can stop anytime we want.’

He looks at her with a blank expression, unblinking.

‘Where do you want to go?’ She offers, just stopping herself from holding out a hand for him to take like she might do with a companion.

‘Seriously?’

He doesn’t mean it as a question though she answers anyway.

‘You never appreciate my choices, I thought I’d let you pick for a change.’

His stare bores into her.

‘I don’t care.’

‘Are you sure about that, because I really-‘

She starts but The Master has already left.

‘Okay then.’

The closest inhabited world to their position in the vortex is a small leisure planet named Avaxus.

From her last visit she remembers bustling cities and week-long parades, cheery people and outrageous parties. Last time, Donna had been carried away on a festival float and they’d both spent a semi-drunken night in the capital’s only anti-gravity brewery.

The morning after had been hell. Her tenth self hadn’t known then that it would be the last trip the two of them would properly take together. Their next trip had ended with The Doctor alone once again, desperately low, desperately hurt until The Master had appeared again. Then she’d died. It hurt to think about it now.

Because of Ohila, the Time Lord in question would not be able to stray further than thirty metres from her- Avaxus’ long beaches and flat lands were fantastic for people who liked keeping a close watch on their friends.

She sets the co-ordinates.

The TARDIS materialises on the beaches of the planet’s capital.

She checks the climate first. The scanner shows a vast expanse of light pink sky, a beaming sandy beach and a neat row of cartoonish sun emojis- each wearing a pair of kitsch aviator sunglasses and flashing a thumbs up with their garish yellow sun-arms. Perfect.

As she bounds toward the door something sharp tugs at her neck. She is about to cry out in pain when she realises that it is not pain at all but an unfamiliar _pull_.

Behind her, she hears The Master yelp in surprise as he is pulled back into her line of sight. An invisible force flexes between them like a tether before loosening again as he stills.

She had presumed Ohila’s charm would be more humane.

‘Huh.’

Feeling heat rush to her face, The Doctor edges slowly away. A few seconds later she sees The Master stumble forwards with a pained grimace. His hands fly to his throat, feeling at it with frantic urgency. Though he is standing far away, she can feel soft tears trickle down his cheeks as if they were her own.

‘I’m going to walk forwards now.’ She says softly.

His eyes squeeze shut and after a small eternity she sees him take a small step towards the door. The air between them tenses further somehow.

Keeping a close distance to him, The Doctor tentatively takes a step outside. Any hint of her anxiety is immediately evaporated

A wave of fresh air almost knocks her back inside. The wind is whipping the smell of sea-salt across a long sandy beach, spreading it amongst vast swathes of people. She can see children chasing one another across the sand, kicking up clouds of yellow in their wake. Further along the shore lies a bustling sea-front packed with trinket shops and twee little bars with neon signs.

Behind her, the TARDIS doors creak slowly open. The Master emerges, his worn face and dark. Against the bright colours of the sky, he looks like a walking Halloween costume. His usual purple jacket is covered in slashes and singe marks but retains the impression it has just returned from the drycleaners.

He regards the beach with a deadened expression before settling his attention on her, the numb brown of his irises only deepening as their eyes meet for a fleeting moment. The Doctor almost forgets how to talk.

‘Come on then.’

They travel for a few minutes, weaving in and out of the crowds of beachgoers until the crowd thins out into flat sands. The Doctor bounces for a short distance, stopping dead when she feels a familiar tugging in her neck. She looks back and spots him kicking deliberately into a child’s sandcastle.

His mouth curves into a sly half-smile and the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

They walk without purpose for a long time. The Doctor tries to enjoy the taste of the sea in the air, less so the broken silence that seems to stalk her. She tries not to let the absence of his own usually manic thoughts worry her.

‘Just a little further.’

She finds the perfect spot a little further down the beach. There is still the buzz of the town behind them here and a few families playing in the sun up ahead.

‘Here.’

Her coat lands on a sand dune.

The Master casts a single withering eye over it and turns in the opposite direction.

‘Master-‘

She stops herself. He’s already moving down the beach towards the sea, just far enough to feel for him to feel a sting of pain through their bond.

Against the bright glare of the sun she sees him crouch directly in the path of the water, somehow managing to avoid the ocean’s playful swash.

The beach stirs in thoughtful contemplation.

The Doctor stays still for a few seconds before deciding she can’t stand it. The small ice cream shop along the shore is very understanding, taking a few assorted gizmos instead of the $99 required for a cone.

By the time she returns The Master is sitting on her coat, in the same brooding stance he had perfected so well. She flashes him a look then sits half-on and half-off the coat beside him. He leans over to take a small lick of the ice cream and she’s not sure whether it’s endearing or annoying.

They sit in silence, the sounds of children’s laughter washing over them. The Doctor takes a much-needed deep breath.

It occurs to her then that she hadn’t thought any of this through.

What had they landed here for?

Certainly not for his sake and not for hers either.

Had she landed here in a fit of sentimentality?

To find the quiet she so badly lacked?

All she had been longing for was a way to escape the sinking, twisting feeling in her gut- but it had followed with her. He had followed too, of course, like a weight around her neck. The last thing either of them needed was to be swallowed up in noise and glamour. How could they laugh here when they couldn’t even say a word to each other?

Avaxus was a place meant for carnivals and all-night parties, happiness and euphoria, something neither Time Lord had enough emotional stability for.

If that was still true, then why did something feel off?

She glances at the people around them, concentrating mostly on small gatherings of two or three. There’s laughter, yes, and the children are smiling but the adults have grimmer expressions.

They’re huddled together, faces close to one another as murmurs pass through the group.

Their whispers carry in the air like a storm has just passed and the dew is still hanging. It feels like the bated breath between an inhale and an exhale. Something has happened here recently. A blight? A storm? A tornado?

No. These people are terrified. Something, someone has been here.

She quickly looks up, The Master has propped himself reluctantly on top of his own coat and is gazing emptily into the distance. _Occupied enough_.

The Doctor focuses on their minds.

One of the adults is projecting a dense haze of anxiety so thick she can’t tell if they’re still conscious. She slips into their mind, quietly repairing damage as she goes. There’s something in here, hidden behind a barrier of some kind. It’s so fragile that she passes through without detection.

Beyond the wall, the human has constructed a scene, replaying over and over again.

Horror runs through her.

The image of a man, clear as day. A familiar face, black tufts of hair, calculating brown eyes- dark with evil from the first time she had seen Nyssa’s father again. The face is laughing, standing over a sea of bodies. Children’s bodies.

The man is happy, so distracted by the buzz that the scene changes. The human is running now, heaving out hard breaths as they run faster and faster, sneaking one quick look back at the beach.

But how many bodies? The sea is so thick she cannot see where it ends- and it’s the same beach. The same stretch of flat sands.

She severs the link, gasping for breath.

He’d known this planet. He’d let her amble into it, skipping like a schoolgirl.

‘ _You_.’ She rasps, her voice shaking with restraint.

‘What is it, Doctor?’

She can’t tell if he’s smirking or not. A haze of deep red descends over her vision. She’s _furious_.

The Doctor feels the death particle between her fingers again. She wants it. She wants to do it so badly. _Let him have what he wants. Let him submit to it._

The Master raises an eyebrow.

‘Yes?’

Bile rises. He doesn’t deserve to die, to be released of this punishment. He doesn’t deserve the care and love she has shown all this time _for him_ , to make _him_ feel loved. He has spited her at every opportunity.

A solution occurs. She’s going to fix it and she’s going to make him watch. This time she is The Doctor and he will be her unwilling companion.

Something snaps.

‘Get up.’

‘Pardon?’

The Doctor begins to run, clambering over the sand as quickly as her short legs can manage. He follows, scrambling a little behind as the tug of the distance between them grows stronger and stronger.

‘Doctor. Where are you going?’

‘To find the children.’

She can sense him choking on thin air as he scrambles to keep up, is disgusted when she senses a slight twinge of pleasure ripple through him.

‘They’re all gone, Doctor.’

She turns and spits at him.

‘They aren’t gone until _I say_ they’re gone.’

‘It’s a fixed point.’

‘Why the children?’

‘I was dying, Doctor. I needed a new body.’

‘They were _children_.’

‘Doctor-‘

‘I wanted to help you!’ She’s shouting now. ‘I wanted to make you happy again- isn’t that what you want to be?’

‘Doctor.’ He says softly.

‘What?’ She snaps.

‘I didn’t just come to this planet once.’

She’s opens her mouth to respond but in the few seconds of silence, something changes.

The beach is deserted. The families are gone, their beach umbrellas blow over the sand like tumbleweed.

The Doctor senses it too late. A wave of terror and screaming rage. Something is coming for them.

‘We need to go.’

She runs, The Master behind her. It’s not fast enough. The wave is coming, hunting them.

The Doctor stumbles and in one brief moment the terror fills her too.

The sky goes dark.

The ground spins and suddenly she isn’t running anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :0!
> 
> -I just thought I'd do a shameless plug and drop my Twitter (@andiedontshame) and Tumblr (mistress-carnage), I'm always looking for cool moots like you guys!


	6. six: the woman with the gleaming smile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A house, a woman and a war appear in the same chapter. The Master and The Doctor continue to hurt but the pain can only sustain for so long.

59 days remaining

The Master sits.

He can’t tell how long he’s been sitting, just that it’s been a long time. He can’t sit here much longer, the next wave is coming. It would be a dismal feeling knowing he’d been killed by himself for a second time- or was it the third?

His neck doesn’t bite or sting with pain anymore but there is a strange sense of being wounded, like a small forest animal. The Master knows now that it is because he is close to her, huddled only a few metres from the side of her bed.

It has been twelve hours since the attack on the beach- _his_ attack on the beach, he supposes. They had run, then The Doctor had fallen.

For once in his lives, The Master had been lucky since he knew exactly what was going to happen next and when it would come. There had been a time when he’d have run faster. Now, he’s counting his days with dizzy excitement

He looks at the Doctor, unmoving on the bed.

Her face is still. Painful and calm and so untouched.

He wishes it would hurt, wills it to fill up with torment. For her to feel pain like he does. And maybe, just for one agonising moment, to feel like nothing.

The pounding in his head worsens. He can’t think about that. Not now.

The house they are in is far away from the beach. Out in the suburbs of the capital- as far as he could run carrying her with the wind behind him.

Beyond here nothing much grows. Apart from a few houses, the view from the window reveals only dust and rocks. Far in the distance, a mountain range sprawls across the land, just blocking the morning sun from view as its rays bleed into the valley.

He wishes it looked less like Earth.

With every hour spent alive The Master is slipping away, slowly revealing the demons of a small, scared little boy. Koschei wants to feel something so desperately, to cover his pain with more pain. Something, anything to muffle the noise.

The Cyberium twinges.

The Doctor wakes to the sound of him retching into a bin.

‘Master?’

He stumbles drunkenly out of the bedroom door, crash landing into the wall opposite. It caves inwards and the wounds on his side scream at the impact.

A timid woman- a disposable he’d hypnotised into helping them- rushes into the room where the Doctor is now lying awake, too panicked to look at him. Through his own pained groans, he can hear the Doctor’s voice strain and crack as she tries to speak.

‘Who are you?’ She croaks, ‘Where is he?’

The door blows shut, muffling the commotion behind it.

The Master sags, exhausted. A shiver of weariness trespasses down his spine and into his core. The wounds will need redressing now but there won’t be anything but primitive medicine for lightyears.

They’ll have to move soon too. Find shelter, or build it, somewhere off-piste and away from the next wave of attacks.

He can’t remember everything. At the time he’d been clinging on to the shreds of a borrowed life, the glee had just been a mask for his dread of a pitiful death. Trakenite him hadn’t cared whether the bodies were young, just if they were utilisable. He’d ransacked the planet once but had no luck finding any vessel strong enough to carry him.

First, the winds had come. The towns had been swept through, people carried away and tossed like tiny chess pieces into the ocean. Then he’d retreated, leaving the planet to heave a brief sigh of relief. Those hours were where they stood. There was so much more left to come.

‘Master!’ She calls.

The Master peels his limbs away from the wall and takes a moment to collect himself. The Cyberium is still there nagging at his head. Every now and again it roars, stoking the embers of his rage into a spitting inferno. It’s there now, draining him.

‘Come here!’

The door opens and the woman from earlier bursts out of it, only just staggering to a halt in front of him. She lets out a small shriek and quickly trains her trembling eyes to his shoes.

‘Watch your step.’ He growls.

The disposable murmurs an apology and limps away.

‘No. Stay.’

She pauses, trembling.

‘Pack a day’s supplies for each of us. Then get the fuck off my back.’

He watches her whimper and skitter off.

-

It is 53 minutes later that The Doctor finds him. He is partway through bandaging the gash on his arm a little too tight for comfort.

She looks better, glowing. Even healthier than before the attack

His repulsive draw to her rises like bile and he is disgusted again.

‘We have to get back to the TARDIS.’

‘Too late love. It’s been buried.’

She walks towards him, scowling.

‘I’m sorry for thinking better of you. I’m an idiot for even letting you out here.’

‘Letting?’ He scoffs, ‘If you need another pet let me know, Doctor. Or should I start walking on my hands and knees?’

‘If that’s what gets you going.’

His turn to scowl.

‘In case you hadn’t noticed, you’re still alive.’

The Doctor meets his eyes with what anyone else might consider gratitude. Unfortunately, he hasn’t forgotten who he’s talking to.

‘Thanks.’ She spits.

‘Pardon?’

‘We need to get going.’

‘Where’s the disposable?’ He probes.

‘We’re taking her with us.’

‘No, we aren’t.

‘She’s a doctor. Her name is Iicha.’ She turns aside, ‘It’s okay, you can come in. He can’t hurt you.’

The fae like woman enters, trembling as she peeks around the door. The Master can’t help but wonder what her head would look like under the weight of a large brick.

‘Iicha has a ship in a neighbouring town. If we walk, we’ll make it in a day. Is that right?’

Iicha nods and shakily tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.

‘I know you’re not going to tell us what the next attack is going to be so I’ll just assume it’s coming soon.’

‘You’re right, I’m not.’ He lies.

‘We’re leaving now. And no, you don’t get a choice.’

‘Quelle surprise mon amour.’

-

The sky outside is still, its feathery pink hue now a light purple. It is midday. In the house, they had avoided the night- bitter and cold if he remembers correctly- only to find themselves scorched by the morning heat.

It is quiet in the drylands.

He can remember hearing the planet’s silence all those years ago and wondering how such a noisy planet could be so still even from thousands of miles above. Many had survived that first wave, none had ventured outside to witness the second.

Iicha has packed a day’s worth of supplies for the three of them. On the journey, she finds plenty to discuss with The Doctor, suddenly developing a talkative streak.

The Master walks a short distance behind, weighing up the benefits of making a run for it. If he runs far enough then the neck tracker will burn into the core of him, stopping both his hearts. She would’ve killed him then, albeit unintentionally. Then she’d have to live with the guilt.

‘You’re not saying much.’ The Doctor calls back to him from her place next to Iicha.

‘There isn’t much to say.’ He murmurs and kicks aimlessly at a rock beneath him, it lands millimeters away from Iicha’s feet, making her yelp timidly. The Doctor casts him a stern look but drops back enough that they can talk face to face.

‘You’re not even showing off, it’s unsettling.’

‘Tell me, what would be the point?’

“ _What would be the point?”_ She almost chokes. The Master hopes he won’t see the soup he’d fed her earlier again. ‘If only you’d have said that instead of trying to destroy half the universe every time we meet.’

‘Believe it or not, something happened to change my mind.’

That shuts her up.

They walk together in silence for a few minutes before she asks.

‘Why didn’t you tell me what this planet was? Why did you let us come here?’

‘ _We_ didn’t choose anything. You did.’

‘You said you didn’t care where we landed. I told you we were coming here.’

The Master stops in his tracks.

‘No. No you didn’t.’

The Doctor opens her mouth to speak and then closes it again. He can see the cogs whirring as her brain tries to catch up.

‘But- I remember-‘

‘You can’t imprison me, Doctor. I’m not going to be your companion whether you force me into it or not. I don’t want this. If you can’t listen to me then please, leave me alone.’

The Master doesn’t wait for a response, he is already half-way to a trembling Iicha before she follows, trailing.

‘So.’ He begins, ‘I heard your planet was just attacked by an extremely handsome genocidal maniac.’

-

It is mid-afternoon before they stop for a break. In Iicha’s panic, she had retreated behind The Doctor who is trying now to make hollow conversation with the woman. Both are now uncharacteristically quiet- or perhaps it is just that The Doctor is now stuffing down her seventh bread roll

If he’s right, then they’re going to need to run soon. The plus-one isn’t likely to make it.

He’s halfway through a flask of tea when the first siren sounds. It’s louder than he remembers and off-key too, the sound modulating as it travels across empty space.

‘What is that?’

Iicha’s eyes are wide open. So wide that The Master thinks they might fall out and onto the picnic blanket.

‘The a-alarm- it’s for emergencies—it never sounds-‘

The Doctor begins stuffing what she can into a bag, crumbs fly in every direction.

‘We need to move.’

Iicha lets out a wail of terror, looks tearfully at The Doctor and limps to the nearest rock to support herself.

He hears the buzz of the sonic as it glides through the air.

‘Engine fumes. Someone’s been here before us.’

What she neglects to say is that the engine is consistent with a Type 45 TARDIS, one he had stolen himself from the vaults under the Citadel as a child. The bastard thing had broken on its maiden voyage.

‘Iicha. What’s the quickest way to shelter from here?’

‘U-underg-ground, there are h-holes near every way st-tation. I’ll show y-you.’

They follow quickly, The Master lagging a little behind as he watches the sky darken to a murky grey. In a minute the valley will be rubble, reduced to a fine dust like the sand he still has stuck between his toes.

He has little energy to keep pace with them and the wounds on his legs are stinging more than they ever have before.

‘Come on!’ The Doctor shouts back at him. If he doesn’t run fast enough the thing in his neck will kill him before the next attack does.

Kill him.

His legs stutter to a halt.

Nothing in him is going to keep running. This could be what he’s been waiting for, he just needs the bombs to fall quickly.

He sees her skid to a halt the moment the tugging starts. Iicha is miles ahead in just a second.

‘What are you doing?!’

The Doctor’s face pales as she realises.

He’s not going to move this time. At least it will be quick.

The siren blares louder now, so intense that his vision shakes and he almost doesn’t see her sprinting towards him.

‘ _Koschei_!’

The Doctor is fast, she makes it to his side with a few large bounds. But the drones are so close, he can see their black wings blocking out the sun. She won’t make it in time.

_Let me have this_. He projects.

‘No.’

With one swift movement she topples him into her arms and he is lifted snug to her chest. Then she begins to run again, tearing towards Iicha.

He tries to move his fingers, to free himself, but they are paralysed in her grip.

Trapped.

Something in his brain switches off then and the drones still in the sky. The breeze from their propellers freezing suddenly.

Has time stopped? Has he stopped? Maybe this is death for the last time.

_Doctor_. He says, though it echoes back at him. There is no answer.

The world is still.

He looks up at her, the power of her. The soft curve of her cheeks against the hardness of tired eyes. Aged eyes, older than his.

Her eyes are always the same, he can remember looking into them as a child and seeing only stars. In this body they are guarded, glassy but at the same time shimmering, determined and holding so much within them.

Death must be kind if this is his last sight. He needs her to look down and smile like she doesn’t know what she knows,

_I loved you._ He thinks at her.

Time chooses that moment to restart, spinning forward fast like pedals on a bike rolling down a hill. The pain floods him again, white hot rage and burning hate spit. The Cyberium writhes.

The Doctor stops abruptly in front of the entrance and he falls from her arms, hissing at the impact.

‘Down! Both of you.’

The hole in the ground opens at her voice, there’s a ladder there and a thick, horrible darkness.

Iicha goes first, her short fall from the ladder is broken by a brick floor just a few feet further down. He waits for the Doctor to follow but she stays crouched above the entrance, feet planted stubbornly. The drones are seconds away.

‘Go.’

‘Ladies first.’

‘I’m not a lady. Move or I’ll push you down instead.’

He sneers at her as he heaves himself down onto the ladder. It is tempting to land on the woman below but he allows himself to indulge in a small kindness. An act of charity for the day.

Despite the pain, he lands safely on the floor of the underground. Something sears in his arm.

‘Doctor!’ The disposable screams beside him.

She’s hauled herself into the tunnel but the hatch is still closing. The thoughts from earlier return but time doesn’t slow.

From the gap the hatch he sees a drone drop the bomb.

The last thing he sees is white, brilliant light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy.
> 
> Love, as always. x


	7. seven: family of dust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doctor? Are you there?
> 
> Doctor can you hear me?
> 
> I’m going away now. I wanted to say goodbye.
> 
> The Master stares into silence and death once more. Elsewhere The Doctor finds the tiniest spark of life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mwah! :)

58.5 days remaining

The sound of the bomb buzzes around him and for one brilliant minute the world is quiet.

There are stars. So many pinpricks of dazzling light that he is blinded, his eyes weeping at the saturation. There should be sound too but it is blanketed by the thick muffling silence of the stars. They do not speak.

In the silence he reaches out his mind, feels for her through the white noise.

_Doctor? Are you there?_

_Doctor can you hear me?_

_I’m going away now. I wanted to say goodbye._

He waits for the rush of her, the angry weight of a million thoughts flooding into his head but nothing comes.

_I suppose I should say some things before I go._

He pauses. Waits to see if she really is there. Perhaps she’s listening for once.

_But I don’t think I want to give you that satisfaction._

Cruel, Master.

_I’m going to sleep now, Doctor. Bye bye._

He stares into the stars as they blur together. Their draw is getting noisier and noisier, the silence ebbing away into a quiet mutter of voices.

He wants this. He’s wanted this for a while and he’s happy.

He’s happy with this. Right?

The stars flicker. It’s not that he’s not sure- of course he is, so why are the stars going out?

The mutterings change, getting louder and louder, it’s the voice of one person now. They’re screaming his name. But whose voice is it? The woman’s or The Doctor’s?

‘Master!’

The bright white cuts completely, suddenly plunging the stars into darkness.

‘Master, _please!_ ’ The Doctor’s voice like a dull blade through the silence. She’s close.

The dark darkens, morphing into the familiar purple-black at the back of his eyelids. The stars…

‘Wake up!’

‘Please, please wake up!’

His vision darkens round the edges, the dark graphite grey of closed eyes transitioning into a thicker, deeper black. Surely it must be death this time.

If this is the end, then Hell is clammy, wet and currently through soaking his undershirt. Funny. He’d always imagined burning fires and little men with horns.

He can’t be far away from water. Perhaps drinkable, perhaps _bearable_. There’s a noise close by to him, a steady drip of something liquid splashing into a pool growing ever so gradually quieter…

‘MASTER!’

The Master jolts upright, chest heaving, the darkness of his eyes replaced with the warm glow of _her_.

The Doctor’s face is inches away and very much still breathing. She’s crying, hard. Strands of her hair stick wetly to her cheeks as they fill with tears, wiry blond streaks flying towards him as she gasps out lungfuls of air.

He’s still alive. Of course.

They pause like that for a few gasped breaths, angry grief passed between shared air as they meet each other’s gazes.

‘Doctor-‘ He begins.

The Doctor face hardens, the soft eyes from a moment ago snapping into a fierce scowl.

‘Why did you do that?!’ She spits, bounding upright so she can glower down at him.

‘Haven’t you been listening, love?’

‘This isn’t another of your stupid games.’

He scoffs and heaves himself up.

‘No, Doctor. It isn’t.’

The Doctor turns away from him. He can feel her seething quietly, not quite enough rage to speak. The Master dusts himself off and stands slowly. It’s so dark around them that he cannot see the hatch they entered through, only the outline of her figure ahead.

After a long silence, she speaks.

‘Do you really hate me that much?’

She steps towards him, face still angry but there’s something raw in her eyes.

The spite on his tongue burns but he can’t reply. She really doesn’t know.

‘Please just tell me. Should I stop trying?’

He opens his mouth.

‘Doctor!’ Iicha cries. They jolt away from each other.

In the darkness he can just make out the shape of a large arch up ahead and underneath it, a figure stumbling from the gloom. The footsteps grow louder, revealing Iicha’s tiny head and a small torch. She’s panting, breathless.

The woman has hair like Missy, he notes, but the explosion has done nothing to it. Her dark skin looks unblemished and there are no burn marks on her clothes.

She’s running fast too. Too fast to be injured- as if there had been no explosion at all.

So what had knocked him out?

‘I’ve found another survivor!’

Iicha stumbles into view, narrowly avoiding his eyes. The Doctor sighs beside him.

‘Concious?’

Iicha nods.

‘Let’s go. We need all the help we can get.’

They enter the tunnel after Iicha.

The Master tries to trail behind but the distinct lack of light makes it impossible to see. The wet floor is too slippery and he doesn’t want the humiliation of asking to be helped back up so he sticks to Iicha’s side and follows the torch light, much to the human’s disdain.

A few minutes in and a bomb falls above them, making the roof of the tunnel shudder and rain wet brick dust over the three of them. It’s so loud that they have to stop until the echo fades.

The Doctor doesn’t look at him.

The tunnels are so dark that they spot the lantern a good five minutes before the camp. When they reach the end of the passage it opens into what looks like a crossroads. Three other shadowy archways frame a small mass in the middle, lying underneath a pointed brick ceiling.

As they edge forwards Iicha falls behind him, her torchlight casting him as a lanky silhouette over the walls. The Doctor holds up a hand for them to stop. The survivor is here.

In the centre of the clearing is a mess of blankets. In the midst of them a small lantern casts a wash of yellow gloom over the face of a woman. She doesn’t look up.

Iicha lets out a whimper and stumbles backwards into the tunnel wall, leaving The Master standing awkwardly in the middle.

‘I’m the Doctor. Nice to meet you.’

The Doctor jiggles her hand about in an awkward waving motion. The woman under the blankets says nothing and clings tighter to a small bundle of cloth close to her chest.

‘So… what should I call you?’

From her place over by the tunnel wall, Iicha shakes her head timidly. A lost cause then.

The woman makes no sound. It’s too dark to fully see her face but The Master can smell it on her, the scent of quick, wounded death. The Doctor hasn’t noticed it. Of course she hasn’t.

He waits as she stumbles for words and lets the smell consume him. It’s sweet. If he stands here long enough maybe the smell will drag him in.

After a while The Doctor finds something sufficiently bullshit-y to say.

‘I’m here to put this right.’ She uses the voice she uses to lie to her pets, that patronising almost whisper. Like she’s letting them in on a secret, like she’d ever let them know anything about her. ‘I promise you, you’ll see your people. I can find the person responsible for this.’

He almost introduces himself.

The woman says nothing but the sound of her laboured breathing grows louder. It’s a death rattle. He wonders if The Doctor has picked up on the wheezing, groaning noise.

‘We’re going to get out of here, okay? I’ve got a ship not far from here. It’s safe. You can trust me.’

The woman shakes her head slowly. He can see the effort it takes her just from the way her silhouette stutters and shakes.

‘I can reach it, bring it back here. I’m a doctor. Please let me help you.’

Iicha inches towards the Doctor, her voice barely exceeding a whisper.

‘She’s badly hurt... I couldn’t get her to talk…’

‘Did you pack any medical supplies? If we could just ease the pain-‘

The woman groans loudly.

‘Doctor. She has a baby. Look.’

As if on cue, the bundle of cloth in the woman’s arms gives a small gurgle. The Doctor’s eyebrows shoot up in alarm.

‘I’m going to take her so we can see you properly, okay?’ She says quickly. ‘Iicha do you know First Aid?’

The Master watches as The Doctor takes the baby gently from the woman’s arms. Round the other side Iicha is holding out a bandage, searching for wounds to dress.

‘What’s she called?’

The woman mouths something that he can’t work out.

‘Laika?’ Iicha offers. The woman nods weakly.

‘That’s a beautiful name.’

He watches as she cradles it awkwardly. Her hand rests awkwardly under the baby’s head, it’s the wrong hold and a little painful to watch.

After a few disjointed seconds, the baby stirs, unsettled, and lets out a shrieking cry that pierces his ears. The Cyberium snarls at the noise.

‘Oh- uh- sorry. I’ll give you back.’

The Master winces. The woman in the blankets has stopped breathing. As The Doctor offers up the baby, her body slumps down onto the floor. It’s obvious from the calm in her face that she’s already going but the two of them persist anyway.

‘No no no no. Come on. You’re okay, come on.’

Iicha crouches, frozen. They watch together as the woman goes limp in the Doctor’s arms. It’s almost instantaneous, surgically quick and without so much as a plea for life.

The Master thinks back to a time when he’d laid in that same position. _Spend the rest of my life imprisoned with you? I’d rather die._

Fate has a sense of humour it seems.

The Doctor passes her hand over the woman’s face, closing her eyes with a delicacy he hasn’t seen from her in a long time. After a few seconds she stands up, hugging Laika close to her chest. The baby wails softly at the contact and grasps at the air with it’s tiny reaching hands.

‘We need to take the baby. Get as close to your ship as we can. We don’t know what’s coming next-‘ her eyes flit to him expectantly. ‘Iicha, do you know the way from here?’

The timid woman nods and edges closer to where The Doctor is standing.

‘It’s only a few hours from here. B-but won’t it be dangerous?’

‘Not so long as I’m here.’

This seems to reassure her, The Master can’t understand why.

‘My parents, they built in a shield. It should be safe but- my parents they- they-‘

Iicha bursts into tears. In the Doctor’s arms, Laika starts to wail softly in response.

‘It’s alright. Talk to me. You need to be strong now, okay? We can get somewhere safe but you need to tell us where to go.’

‘My parents t-they built a shield around the ship, it’s biolocked-‘so it must be keyed to her body-print then, ‘It won’t hold for l-long.’

The Master knows that tone. Code for ‘I’m not sure if you can even reach my ship, let alone live past my overly complicated defence systems.’.

He wonders if it’ll even recognise their genetic codes, if he’s lucky Time Lords might be categorised as ‘extinct’.

‘What happened to your parents Iicha?’

‘They d-died.’

Here it comes.

‘I’m so sorry.’

The sobbing starts up again.

It’s a dark comedy watching The Doctor try to comfort Iicha without actually touching her- not a hugger, he notes.

The woman cries dreadfully. The way her face contorts into ugly fleshy crinkles and wails like the tiny red-faced baby in The Doctor’s arms. It’s disgustingly emotive, so loud and vulnerable.

They fuss around. There’s more crying and comforting. He doesn’t stare, instead his gaze flits across the grimy tunnel walls. It’s filthy here though he feels an odd sense of belonging. Somewhere there must be skulls hiding in the walls, maybe he could try and find them to freak The Doctor out.

There isn’t anything to say so he waits for them to stop talking and focuses on Laika instead. The baby is scrunching its face up and pummelling the empty air

In her distress, Laika makes a confused little ‘ah’ sound and points two small fists towards him.

_Hello human._

_Ah!_ Thinks Laika.

_Ah to you too. You’re angry aren’t you._

_Ah ah!_

_I understand. She can be very annoying. I would try crying some more, it works for me._

_Wah ah._

He chuckles under his breath.

_What do you remember, little one? About the big loud noises._

_Awah. Ah ah._

_Scary? Oh I am sorry, I should’ve been quieter._

_Ah._

_Shame_ _on me, I know. I don’t want to be here, Laika. Maybe you can free me._

Iicha and The Doctor begin to move beside him. The sobbing has disappeared and the two of them seem to be striding with an eerie overconfidence. It’s still light enough to see where they’re going, the lantern’s glow has gotten impossibly stronger but the candle is waning, just a few shreds of wax left now.

The Master isn’t asked to follow. Instead, he moves when the pain starts.

_I think we’re shifting now human. I wonder how big those lungs are?_

Laika screams. The Master grins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey beautiful people.
> 
> I'm looking desperately for a beta-reader to spare my poor non-DW friend Jo from having to trawl through my sketchy writing. If you can help or know anyone that can, please, please, please let me know (my Twitter is @andiedontshame). 
> 
> I'm up for doing fic exchanges, beta-reading in return etc. in exchange for criticism. So please criticise my writing lmao!!
> 
> Oh and whilst you're here, Black Lives Matter. :)


	8. eight: things not to do in a tunnel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Several things happen at once. The Master's new found liabilities- or friends as the Doctor calls them- start on a journey through endless tunnels to find the light at the end. Iicha's ship is the place to be, but will it bring the salvation they've been hoping for?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so stunned by all the support this fic has received recently. I will reply to you all- I love you so much!

The tunnels, the Master realises over the next few hours, are endless.

Laika seems to feel this the most, screaming when the bombs drop above them and wailing when they don’t. It’s loud and it makes things inside his head twinge and roar, but he can’t bring himself to feel annoyed.

The walking isn’t the worst part, it’s seeing the same black clad bricks repeated again and again. The tunnels repeat too, the same crossroads, same rights and lefts. The Master wonders whether they are even moving forwards.

Along the way, he points out little things to Laika like the tiny skittering insects on the floor, to which she giggles or shrieks at. She complains when he stops talking or closes his mind to her when the pain comes. Laika doesn’t like that. 

More often than not now the pain will burn in his head, leaving everything below numb and unfeeling. It makes him stagger over things that aren’t there, hear the Doctor’s voice lecture at him when she isn’t speaking. Just nudging at the border of his own mind, he can feel the tiny ghost of Laika’s annoyance.

They slow down at the first sign of change- a single gap in the brickwork which Iicha seems to think is significant. It’s only a little while before the gaps become more frequent, and the tunnel transforms into a collection of ragged rocks and stalactites.

After reaching a narrowing in the passageway, they stop. The Doctor and an exhausted Iicha manage to find a dry spot of floor amongst the damp, on which to share the last of the rations. 

The Master surprises himself by taking some. The bread is soft, and it gives him something to bite and smother the ache forming at the back of his throat.

Laika seems to see the bread as an injustice and wails harder at the lack of milk. A collective groan echoes through the tunnel.

The Doctor hugs the baby close to her chest, swaddling it in the soft lining of her coat. It doesn’t do much to ease the noise. Something about the sight of it triggers a sickening wave of parental concern within him. The tiny life before him is _hurting_ and he has to make it stop.

_Shhh, little one,_ he coos, pushing a wave of calm towards the child. 

Laika’s cries soften.

The Doctor’s face scrunches in confusion.

“Iicha, did you-” she starts, but the other woman is crouched halfway across the tunnel, a confused frown ghosting her face.

“D-doctor, we need to move. It isn’t safe h-here.”

He notes the bulb in Iicha’s torch has developed a slight flicker and it isn’t just the tremor in the woman’s hand this time. He doesn’t want to use the sonic screwdriver for light, not if it means huddling close to her.

The Doctor grabs the ration pack from the floor and slings it over her shoulder, a silent Laika still swaddled tightly to her chest.

_Good girl._

“How far away is your ship, Iicha?”

“Straight ahead b-but-”

Something clatters in the tunnels behind them, the sound amplifying as it echoes towards them.

“There was b-brick falling from the ceiling, I t-think.”

The Doctor shakes her head and looks back to where the noise came from.

“It could be another survivor,” she counters. “You two carry on and wait for me at the ship. I need to go back.”

Before he can protest, she is striding away, one arm still clutching a very confused Laika.

“Doctor,” the Master hisses, already reaching towards the tracker in his neck.

She stops, shoulders tense. Her breath catches for a second before she walks back towards them, eyes downcast. There’s a glint of exasperation in them, like she’s just remembered that she’s left on the stove. 

“Here,” she mutters, reaching for the top of his shirt and pulling it down. Either she doesn’t register the intimacy of the act, or she doesn’t care. “And no, I’m not disabling it.” 

The Doctor fishes the sonic from her coat and rubs it gently against a sore area of his neck. He flinches back as something fizzes underneath his skin, the silvery Cyber entity in his head disgusted at the closeness. 

“Stop moving.”

“Gladly, love,” he hisses through gritted teeth, earning a small eye roll in return.

The sonic stops buzzing and there’s a moment where the sensation of the tracker disappears completely, before snapping back into action. She doesn’t tell him what she’s done but the tugging is less visible now.

It takes a few seconds for him to realise that she is looking up at him instead of the other way around, and the glee is short lived. There’s a horrible concern on her face. That hateful, pitying, sanctimonious moping look.

“It’s still in your head.”

The Cyberium, she means. She must be able to tell from his face-- the silvery tinge of his irises, the same deathly look Shelley must have had. The Master wonders what it would have been like to watch the poet’s life slip away, and what it will be like to watch his own face in that same moment. 

“It found its prime candidate, Doctor.” He doesn’t intend to gloat but the intonation gets in there somehow.

“Go on without me,” she glowers. “I need to see whether anyone survived down here.” 

Without a word, The Doctor disappears into the darkness, leaving him and her new pet alone, accompanied only by the dim glow of torchlight. The two of them slowly begin the journey down the tunnel, leaving as much distance between each other as the tight walls will allow.

He doesn’t comment on how strange it is to see her walk away after days stuck together, or how- impossibly after all his rage- he doesn’t want her to go. He says nothing at all about the creature beside him and nothing about the sudden emptiness of the air without Laika’s cries.

The tracker in his neck is eerily quiet too, a contrast to the shrieking and bawling of the Cyberium.

The pet walks beside him in deafening silence, the beam of the torch quaking along with her tremor. It isn’t the sort of tremor that belongs to a scared little girl, more like someone who has seen more than she cares to ever again.

He cranes his neck towards her as they walk, examining. She can tell he’s looking.

“The s-ship is d-down here,” she says almost inaudibly. “We should be s-safe there.”

A pity.

The Master considers the woman. Iicha is fragile. Iicha is expendable. But Iicha can help him escape this planet and give him the ship he needs to find his TARDIS again. Most importantly, Iicha’s death at his hands would mean the Doctor’s wrath.

He will need to find something near the ship, a sharp rock or tool, and wait for the woman to deactivate the ship’s defences. It won’t be hard to pilot; he’s had enough practice hotwiring various rigs in his day. He’ll leave Iicha’s body in place of the ship, along with the weapon and a message in the human’s dying subconscious.

All he needs to do is follow and keep quiet for now.

They twist and turn through black rocks and looming ceilings, until the passageway becomes too small for them to keep their distance. Incredibly, the pet doesn’t find his presence reassuring, speeding her steps up to keep well ahead of him.

Surely enough it only takes a few minutes more before the two of them stagger from the cave system and into a wide clearing, empty save for a large jet at the center. 

It takes a few seconds for him to take in his surroundings.

The ship itself is adequate enough, but the cavern surrounding it is staggering.

The Master has seen chasms before, but none as perplexing as the space in front of him. It’s tall, extraordinarily so. The sort of vast, gaping cavern that one would expect in an over budget human film-- Alien, maybe, whatever Alien is. Staggering stone walls stretch up into the distance, leaving varied gaps for rays of moonlight to beam through the rocks above and land, like spotlights, on the ship’s casing. 

The cavern is a dead end. Steep, weathered walls cut off any form of an exit. He imagines there were tunnels here once, long since cut off by cascading slides of rock. Perhaps there still are tunnels, heaving with people, masked by the ship’s perception filter.

“Is t-this okay?”

He scoffs a little too audibly.

“Yes.”

Weak.

“The bio-lock should let you in, just w-walk forwards…”

The Master starts toward the ship, easily passing through a thin barrier of electrical heat surrounding the vessel. It’s subtle, precise, brilliant engineering. Iicha’s parents must have known Time Lords before, to have programmed their DNA into the shield’s setting.

The Doctor’s faithful suck-up follows him through the veil, shuffling ahead of where he is standing to tinker with a small panel on the side of the ship. Most likely she’s opening a password lock.

“How did your parents die, Iicha?” he asks.

“Bombs,” she replies, “just bombs.”

“So, quick then.”

“Too quick.”

There’s a shard of flint beside Iicha’s feet, sharpened into a point. Enough to kill her with two or three strikes, or one if he’s precise. He needs to move her away from the panel and onto the ship’s ramp somehow, so his attack will have the element of surprise.

“I’m sorry,” he lies. Iicha falters in front of the panel before returning to focus. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. It’s just- my parents. They died on this planet. I didn’t know how I’d feel, I-”

He turns on the waterworks for maximum effect. The woman stops what she’s doing. Her fingers start trembling again, more violently this time. 

She believes him.

“I’m s-sorry.”

“Thank you.” The Master takes a deep breath in, blows it out again shakily. 

Iicha is edging away from the panel now, away from the flint at her side. He needs her to come closer to him-- or better still, into the ship, so that he can grab the stone unnoticed.

“I just wanted to get away, this place-” he sniffs, holds a sleeve up to wipe at his wet cheek. ‘I need to get out of here, Iicha; they’re the same bombs that killed my parents--” 

And he breaks off with another sob. Is he overdoing it?

He waits a moment before descending into a quiet sobbing. It’s unusual, pretending to grieve. Not that he hasn’t done it before. Grief is private. This is open, naked, exposed. Still, he continues.

It takes a moment but Iicha finally turns towards him, her eyes watering with the power of his own anguish. She smiles meekly at him in some act of desperate comfort, and it’s enough to send a fresh round of crocodile tears streaming down his face.

“Can you help me, Iicha?”

The pet sniffs noisily. Obey. Obey. _Obey._

“I c-can start up the ship.” _Finally_. “J-just until The Doctor gets here.”

The Master nods.

“Thank you.” He smiles, hugging the remnants of his tattered jacket tighter to his chest.

Iicha nods back at him and turns to climb the ramp up to the ship before disappearing inside.

Too easy.

The Master allows himself a smile. Just one victory.

The flint is in his hand in seconds. It’s sharp, sharp enough to be used as a knife. He won’t even need two blows, as long as the pet can’t see him.

He grips it tight, reminds himself what it feels like to be in control. The way the jagged edge skims across his hand is intoxicating, taunting him with a closeness he hasn’t felt for months.

_Oh, how I’ve missed this_.

He crosses the ramp in two swift steps and presses himself flat against the side of the door. Iicha isn’t visible from here; he’ll have to venture further into the ship.

But which way? Left or right? The throat or the heart?

The Master decides then and plots a course through the hangar to the cockpit, feels the weight of the weapon, the thickness of the air.

His hand closes round the flint. Just a little closer…

Something hard slams into his side.

“Don’t fucking move.”

The flint clatters to the floor. Somebody is holding a weapon to his neck, breathing hard in his ear. 

He tries to crane his head round but their grip tightens.

“I guess you didn’t hear me the first time.” 

He’d checked the tunnels behind them to make sure they weren’t being followed- and even so he would have heard the footsteps.

“Now,” he begins, “let’s be reasonable here-”

“Shut the fuck up.” The attacker’s voice cracks.

Iicha.

Fragile, expendable Iicha.

“What would The Doctor say?” It’s all he can choke out under the strain of the blade. 

“I know what you did. You have no right to speak to me-” Iicha says something in a language he can’t understand. It doesn’t sound complimentary.

The Master can’t think of anything he wants to say. A laugh makes its way out of his mouth instead.

“Get in the ship or I slit your throat right here.” She spits the words out like they are poisoning her mouth.

He doesn’t move. The knife tightens against his throat. it’s still not tight enough. Come _on_.

“I said get in the fucking ship!”

The Master squeezes his eyes shut. Another chance at death, if he just disobeys her then…

“Oh I don’t think so.”

The Doctor.

“Put the knife down, Iicha,” she says calmly.

“You saved his life. I’m not going to trust you to give me orders. Back the fuck away. _Now_. ” 

The Doctor stays still, unmoving in the mouth of the cave. Laika isn’t there but he can feel her close by.

“I’m not going to do that. His life isn’t worth _this.”_ She gestures to the knife in Iicha’s hand.

The Master scowls as best he can in the chokehold. The Doctor keeps talking.

“I know what he’s done, the lives he’s taken. Believe me when I say that I’ve been where you are now. It isn’t worth it.” She’s looking at him now as though he’s the one with the knife. “Give him back to me and I will stop all this. I will save this planet and every planet he has ever burnt if you just let me take care of him.”

_Take care of him._

Iicha stands still, panting in the heated air. She’s trembling again. Almost imperceptibly. He wills her to say something.

“You didn’t save my parents.” 

“Drop the knife, Iicha.”

“No.”

Iicha yanks backwards, tugging the Master through the ship’s doors.

“No!”

The Doctor tries to reach the doors in time but falls from the ramp as it lifts off the ground. The Master sees her face through the closing doors, eyes wide and desperate, mouth open screaming his name.

The doors shut with a mechanical clunk.

Iicha takes hold of his shoulders and throws him hard against the wall. Two magnetic metal cuffs extend on either side of him and clamp down, hard, on his wrists. 

“Move and you’re dead,” hisses Iicha. 

He feels the lift when the ship takes off and hears the cry of a single word beneath it.

_Master!_

-

Down, somewhere beneath the surface, a figure chokes out the smoke of a ship’s engine. Her eyes are burning and there’s a tugging in her neck, a fierce burning tug. Behind her are the tunnels, bare. There are no survivors.

There’s a voice behind her laughing softly, so softly. And she knows. She _knows_.

“Hello,” says the voice, “My dear, _dear_ Doctor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally have a beta reader! Huge thanks to moonlightkitten on the Thoschei Discord server for checking this through and teaching me a few things about grammar.
> 
> From now on I will always use " instead of ' and I formally apologise for trying to look cool!


	9. nine: the servant of two masters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two Masters, one Doctor, one baby and one murderous killer space assassin named Iicha. 
> 
> Are we at Happy Families yet?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome readers. Welcome to ineternity's 'CONTENT WEEK!!'   
> WOOOHOOO!
> 
> But what does this mean, Kat?
> 
> Well. It means you get a bit of writing/content every day for at least 5 days, maybe more.
> 
> 1\. Remembrance day  
> 2\. Addendum chapter  
> 3\. ???  
> 4\. ????  
> 5\. ???????
> 
> What's in store for content week? Nobody knows. Even I don't know.
> 
> If you want more stuff like this, I've set up a new twitter account called @wheelofkats and I'm having a contest on there where you can send in any prompt you want.

56 days remaining.

Laika is gone.

The Doctor is awake and Laika is gone.

She hadn’t even seen his face. Just the familiar, predatory hiss of that…. _voice_ behind her.

It’d been him. Old him- younger him, she means: fangs, velvet and daddy issues.

She’d had about five seconds of consciousness before she’d blacked out, enough to see the tail end of Iicha’s ship leaving the cavern and feel the tracker digging into her neck. Then she’d blacked out. No gas or sucker punch to the head, just a deep, engulfing slide into unconsciousness.

She decides to open her eyes and take a look at whatever dismal lair she’s been taken to. 

At first her vision is blurred; it takes a while for the smokescreen to clear and for some small vestige of light to shine through the darkness. Wherever it is, it’s black. Very on brand.

The Doctor wipes the remaining bleariness away and surveys her surroundings. It’s the Master’s TARDIS. Much like her own ship’s first interior, but the roundels are a dark, glowing black. Evil Genius Aesthetics 101 then. He hasn’t changed much.

Although she’s seen the room many times before as a captive, something is different now. Not wrong exactly, but odd enough to ring a dozen alarm bells in her head. The room is cluttered; assorted items have been strewn over the floor, in some sort of organised chaos she can make neither heads nor tails of. Clothes, bandages, shackles, capes, knives, and cracked, haunted skulls make up the pile beside her- surely The Master would have cleared this, anticipating visitors?

She’ll have to interrogate him. Provoke a monologue of some sorts… it won’t be hard.

The restraints binding her hands and feet are tight, though she will get out of them in time. Surely he can do better than magnetise her to the wall?

Amateur.

The Doctor’s thoughts are interrupted by familiar footsteps.

The Master appears through a door on the other side of the room, a knowing smirk splayed across his face. _Don’t say anything_ , she wills, and is rewarded with his triumphant silence.

He swaggers victoriously towards the console, and begins to flick at the controls with a conscious bravado, maintaining a piercing eye contact throughout. She neutralizes her expression in response, erasing any hint of desperation that might give him the upper hand.

She has fought him before and won, but not without collateral damage. This Master had been the most destructive of them all, even more so than his current form. The Doctor remembers the fear of it, the fear of _him_. Now she’s blonde again; it’s a fitting return to form.

The Master is watching her from the other side of the console now, the sneer on his face only partially obscured by the time rotor. He isn’t making any effort to take off, but there’s clearly something wired up that needs his attention.

He needs her to react to him. He needs her to break first.

“Doctor.”

“Master.”

He smiles like a predator, teeth bared.

“It’s been a while.”

“Has it?” she says, mainly because she has no idea.

No fangs, so he can’t be a cheetah. He’s way past that phase if she really examines him, but he’s not grey. Not old, but _worn_. The Trakenite sort of worn she’d seen from Nyssa, near the end. His hearts- _(heart?)_ \- isn’t in it, nowhere near in it.

“What am I here for, Master?” The Doctor sighs and tugs lightly at the restraints. The Master smiles and resumes flicking at the controls.

She doesn’t want to fight him. It’s not out of pity or anything remotely near pity, but if she does anything to hurt this version of the Master now, then there’s no telling how the Web of Time will look by the end of it. 

That, and the fact that _her_ Master would never forgive her. Not that she hasn’t already crossed the point of forgiveness. 

He maintains the silence, still eyeing her up and down like a meal. She tries again.

“Not trying to get one up on me again, are you?”

That gets a response.

“For once, Doctor, you aren’t a part of my plan.”

She scoffs. “I find _that_ hard to believe.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. My lives do not revolve around you.”

Her brain chooses that moment to supply an image of Missy, draped over the lid of her grand piano. _Not the time Doctor._

“I thought you’d want to watch,” he continues, finally satisfied with whatever contraption had been strapped to the mainframe.

“Watch what? I’m not going to take part in your sick games.”

The Master grins toothily, and she does her best to contain the queasiness that wells up inside her at the sight of it.

“Avaxus is about to become this universe’s first manmade meteor shower.”

_No._ It isn’t.

“You’d do that to spite me? I am flattered,” she bluffs. He needs the planet. Why bomb it first when he could have obliterated it from the start?

“What did I say, Doctor?” The scowl is back, and this time she can see the remnants of fangs glistening at her in the moody light of the room. “This isn’t about you. You were simply-” he pauses, as if considering the impact of his words, “-collateral damage that I needed to eliminate.”

“And they say romance is dead.”

The revulsion on his face elicits a resounding twinge in her chest.

“Don’t disgust me.”

“Go on then,” she snarls. “Show me how ‘powerful’ you are. I’ll be dead impressed, honest.”

He doesn’t answer that, instead turning away to fiddle moodily with the console. 

She’s beginning to think he’s forgotten about her, when the side of the room splits, seemingly revealing the planet beneath. The Doctor has to squint to see past the bright cosmic light that suddenly engulfs her surroundings, its rays illuminating ring upon ring of orbiting moons, waltzing around a seemingly tiny purple rock.

It’s beautiful and overwhelming and dazzling, like a white-point star hung in the depths of space. For one moment she is totally lost to it.

“Dearest?”

She looks up.

“Have you ever seen a race become extinct?”

The Doctor freezes. He hadn’t been bluffing.

“No!”

The Master presses a button and the world goes mad.

The windowpane flashes a blinding white as the explosion hits the side of the ship. For a second, the world is awash with a rush of fiery heat, bursting through the shields and scorching the room with a fearsome amber.

Outside, in the space where the moons had been, is a ring of smoke and ash. In the middle sits a burning, pulsing ball of molten rock. Huge chunks of earth are tearing and ripping away at the surface, thrown into the air by plumes of thick lava.

It’s death. This is what death looks like.

She watches the planet break up, pieces splintering as waves upon waves of light shred them apart. It’s noiseless; the vacuum of space sucks up the sound of the explosion, but The Master’s TARDIS roars and shudders with the impact.

The fragments of Avaxus slow to a halt in deep space, almost as quickly as the explosion had dislodged them. Each fragment is a rotating, shellshocked husk. Somewhere in the mess of rock and dirt is her TARDIS, buried under bombs and rock and rubble. The ship won’t have survived the explosion.

Avaxus, gone. So like Gallifrey.

She doesn’t catch the sob that tears itself from her mouth until it’s too late.

“I never knew you were so attached, Doctor.”

“Why?” she chokes, unable to bring her own voice higher than a whisper. “Why did you do that? I thought you wanted-“ The words don’t come. What can she say, anyway? She thought he’d wanted life, a body to steal- not this.

“Because carnage, my dear, is _beautiful_.”

Something snaps inside of her and the Doctor sobs. Things that should never have surfaced are welling up now with her tears, things that she couldn’t verbalize if she tried. 

He leaves her after that, without sparing even a glance. Not even a gloat.

She doesn’t count how many hours go by. The restraints don’t ease up, however hard she tugs at them. It’s not worth the energy to try; they are firmer than she had anticipated, and The Doctor cannot find her sonic anywhere.

Somewhere in the middle of her waiting, the ship lands. The Master doesn’t appear but she can tell they’ve arrived at a programmed destination.

The grief doesn’t let up. She sits for hours wailing into the dark, images of the planet below flashing like film-slides through her head. It’s still there in her mind’s eye, through the window, spinning and spinning through space in tiny fragments like a windup dancer.

She thinks about Gallifrey, about the dwindling link to _her_ Master that she can still sense in her head. He’s alive- a horrible low sort of alive, but there are vital signs there. Hearts still beating, mind still hovering just on the edge of her own.

“Master!” she cries-- to which one, she doesn’t know. The younger one is coming now, slowly pacing down the corridor. So slow that each footstep echoes along the metal floor and dies out before the next.

The vibrations approach menacingly, and she forces herself to think. They have landed, she knows. 

But where have they landed? Why have they landed? Surely this Master would want the opportunity to lord it over her, to stay at the scene for as long as it takes for her to break. Although she supposes she already has broken.

The footsteps halt, and the door to the console opens again, revealing two ghostly silhouettes. A monster and a _baby_.

“Laika.” The words leave her lips softly as the little girl approaches.

Laika squirms, silent and sleeping in the Master’s arms. The child is calm. So innocent, so strange next to the man cradling her.

“What are you doing?” the Doctor tries to demand, but finds the breath extinguished inside her.

“Good morning, Doctor. You were sleeping so well, I didn’t want to disturb you.” He smiles, particularly cruelly this time.

“I asked you a question.”

His eyes widen mockingly. The Master tries to protectively touch his hand to his chest like she had actually offended him, before remembering the small baby blocking the way.

“Laika here is very special, the last of her kind. I couldn’t very well find myself wiping out a species, could I?”

He chuckles. Realisation dawns on her.

“You _need_ her.” 

The Master needs Laika, but for what? What she really wants now is a monologue. He’s not too far along for that.

“You see, Doctor, Laika is the last of her kind…” 

She winces. It’s a monologue like she’d hoped for, probably laden with insults, but she has to listen. 

“...Avaxians are now a very valuable commodity. Wouldn’t it be a surprise if somebody had one to spare, mm?”

“This isn’t you, Master. Why sell when you can kill? It’s not like you need the money, unless--” she pauses. He doesn’t move to interrupt, but there is something in the way his arms clasp tighter around Laika that sends a chill through her. “You owe someone a favour.”

“I made an agreement.”

“Someone important,” the Doctor probes. “Someone you’re scared of. Who needs Laika? What for?”

The Master hisses. Now she’s pressed too far.

“Nothing you need to concern yourself with, my dear.”

For the first time since her kidnapping, Laika stirs with a resounding cry.

“I’m not sure she likes you,” she tells him, voice steely. 

His brows furrow in annoyance at the sudden noise.

“Oh, quite the opposite, Doctor. Little Laika seems to have taken to me well, really. I’m rather charming, wouldn’t you say?”

She bites her tongue to hold back the torrent of abuse she wants to hurl at him right now. The air between them shifts, suddenly colder, more serious. He looks out towards the TARDIS doors, as if they would open with a glance.

“Laika has to go now, any last words?”

The Master holds the baby’s crying face towards her.

“You expect me to sit here whilst you abandon a child?”

“Oh, absolutely. Although she won’t be alone. Far from it, actually, if my ally is as wealthy as he says he is,” he murmurs conspiratorially. “I won’t be a second, Doctor. Sit tight.” 

The restraints clamp painfully downwards. She cries out from the shock of it, which only makes the Master snort in amusement.

He takes one last look at her before returning to the console and flipping a switch.

The TARDIS doors slide open and the dark console room is suddenly filled with the music of opulence, a million sickly sweet violins playing in canon to the thunderous voice of a mezzo-soprano. It takes a moment for her ears to adjust to the sound, straining to gauge her surroundings as The Master leaves through the main door.

They’ve seemingly landed inside a dance hall; it looks European, like from a regency costume drama but with more aliens. Aliens in suits, carrying wine glasses, speaking impeccable English even without the TARDIS’ translation circuits. They must be able to see her like they can see The Master now, swaggering down the middle of the hallway toward a tall man standing in the corner.

She needs to attract somebody’s attention so that maybe one of the guests can help her.

“Hello! Hi! Could you- help me, please! I’m in here-” 

Some of the suit-wearing creatures glance over to where she is bound. 

“Yes, hi, you! Can you see me- I need you to help me!”

Before she has even finished the cry for help, the crowd turns away, chuckling. 

Evil aliens then, great, another plan to foil.

Still in his velvet get-up, The Master looks a little ridiculous mingling around with the suits, but all the partygoers seem to regard him with a begrudging respect. He’s reached the tall man now; there’s some nodding and what seems like friendly small talk going on. The Doctor has to crane her head to see what’s going on, as the two shuffle towards the centre of the room.

_Where are you, Laika? What has he done with you?_

Her train of thought doesn’t last for long. Something appears to be happening: a gaggle of partygoers are moving away from the center of the room as the music slows to a halt. Then there is a moment’s rest as the musicians sort through music and adjust their instruments.

The Doctor fills her lungs to scream, a last ditch effort to attract attention--

The orchestra screeches back into life in the loudest way possible, striking up a bastardised version of Beethoven’s 52nd. The noise is stifling for a brief second, violins screeching at maximum volume, before the tall blue creature in the corner raises a hand. The music immediately quietens, and all eyes around the hall swivel inwards.

“We are here because we have a vested interest in the survival of this Universe,” begins the Master

Ah, another grandiose speech. The Doctor has to bite her arm to keep from laughing.

“Today I have a new cause to share with you.” A stranger steps from out of the shadows. The tall blue man has a booming voice, loud enough that she can make out every word from where she is restrained. “I’m sure your pockets are as big as your hearts, Ladies, Gentlemen, Trees, and Multiforms, so today I’m presenting to you a very valuable asset indeed.”

A podium rises from the middle of the room with something sitting right on top of it. The various creatures in the hall buzz with anticipation.

She squints, making out the shape of the object. It is soft, cloth-like, possibly bandaged up and porcelain-coloured like a china doll. Not a crown, far too smooth for that. Can’t be a dress or a garment, nor an antique…. No. The object is moving, the object is screaming--

Laika. The object is Laika.

“May I present to you, the last Avaxian.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was thinking of writing some smut. I read enough of it but I feel like I never contribute anything to the cause >:l 
> 
> Might have to put it under a different name in case my IRLs find it. What do you guys think?


	10. ten: the red room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor is freed- almost- and goes looking for The Master. With Laika gone, she needs to find a way out. Unfortunately, the quickest way to do that is by playing with fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a bitch to write, I think because I have like 4 deadlines apart from this now? Maybe? Plus the angst actually got to me! Ahh! I thought I was immune, oh no! (the author sinks into a pile of despair e.g pages of this fic) (the author needs to stop talking about herself in third person....)
> 
> Maybe a delay with the next chapter as I am juggling deadlines. You might get to see some stuff I'm working on soon, I promise.

55 days remaining

Laika is taken away. She watches. The door closes.

Hours don’t pass after that; rather, they float in and out of the Doctor’s head. She can vaguely register things happening around her, but they are distant. Unimportant. She hasn't been able to bring herself to move yet. Instead she watches the buttons and lights flash on the floor of the console room, dully remembering the events of that afternoon. 

Laika had been sold to the highest bidder. It had taken some time to reach the price: several billion tokens and a sibling of the Hazandra stone, packaged in Darillium Gold Leaf. After the sale, a group of rival bidders had started a fight in the corner, frantically pointing fingers at the podium and making grabs for one another.

The hall had emptied after that, the troublemakers having been escorted away by security, leaving only the buyers and the auctioneers to talk. A couple in regal dress exchanged a few words with the tall man, the Master hanging at their side like a reluctant bodyguard. The Doctor could scarcely make out their faces through her tears. 

The tall man had laughed and joked, pausing only to look cautiously toward the door at the end of the hallway. After a few of these furtive glances, the group had shaken hands and scattered to their respective ships.

She’d lost consciousness then, resurfacing only to hear murmurs of conversation from the hallway as the TARDIS doors snapped shut. The Master had returned.

The Doctor hadn’t cried for help.

She had no plan. 

_Master. Master. Master. Master._

Repeating his name helps somehow, as if he can hear her from this far away. At some point during her repetitions, she lets the unbearable weight of it all dizzy her, dozing off. The dizziness makes his name slur in her mind as though she is drunk. 

At one point The Master undoes the shackles around her wrists and leaves her slumped against the floor. He says something to her; it doesn’t sound like it’s funny but he laughs anyway.

She stares out into the empty space when he has gone. Only a theatre of lights remains, blurring together where the console had been; a palette of Modernist blacks and car park yellows. Everywhere she looks is garish. The junk on the floor seems to fill out as time goes on, growing larger and more confusing the more she tries to look at it. 

She catalogues the items nearest to her. There’s a bone- definitely not human; a pile of assorted charges and batteries which the Doctor presumes are stolen; a detached lever in reaching distance. Past that, objects become blurred, but there are recognisable shapes which stand out.

In the furthest corner of the mess, The Master’s old black cape lies in a ruffled heap. There’s a large clock on top of it. It's tacky-- it looks like something from an Earth tat-shop in the nineties, and there’s a cheapness to it that doesn’t fit with the rest of the junk.

The clock sounds on the hour, but it is so confused by the vortex around it that the hands move backwards and stutter to a halt as they catch up to each other. She’s heard it six times since she woke.

She should really get up now.

Somewhere in the space between two chimes, she rises, head pounding in time with the tiny bleeping noises the scanner makes. It takes a while for the room to stop spinning and the walls to stay still, but in time she slowly regains her vision.

_Focus, Doctor. Focus._

The Doctor hauls herself past the controls and through the door at the edge of the room, staggering past the piles of junk that litter the floor. Walk. That’s what she’s going to do.

After the seventh repeated corridor, the ship decides to let her explore. In the daze of it all, she mistakes this for friendliness and quite accidentally finds herself in a room composed entirely of cacti. None of the rooms after that quite compare, not even the bathtub for snakes or the fully stocked poison refinery.

_Fuck you too then._

She’s passing through her forty-ninth corridor when one of the doors opens, seemingly inviting her inside.

The Doctor peers a little haphazardly through the door, immediately revealing herself to anyone inside with a large bang as she trips against the doorframe. 

The heat inside the room is striking. As she advances, she begins to take in more of her surroundings. The TARDIS has outdone herself this time; there aren’t any snakes in view, but surely, _surely_ there’s something here that wants to kill her. It seems she's stumbled across a small library whose climate seems to be this TARDIS’ approximation of a blazing winter ski lodge.

The Doctor edges her way inside cautiously, taking in the scene around her with something resembling the weariness of a hangover. At the end of the short room, a large fireplace crackles behind a grate. A Persian rug and two chairs are arranged neatly before it, mirroring the symmetry of the library itself. The Master is seated on one of them, head turned and seemingly on edge at her presence. 

“Ah, Doctor. Decided to join me?”

He greets her in that melodramatic, trademark villain sort of way. The rather cheesy, ‘so bad it’s good’ characteristic raise of his eyebrow that she’s not going to admit she’s missed.

On the floor ahead, she notices the silhouette of a cat curled up snugly in front of the fire. The Master has never had pets before, and she dreads to think where the animal has come from.

He flips a page in his book. “This is Shadow. Here, girl.”

The cat uncurls herself and stretches, before making its way over to The Master’s outstretched hand. After a few strokes behind its ear, the cat ‘mrows’ softly and settles at his feet. The proximity between them, the animal's ease around him, is oddly off-brand.

She watches the cat for a second before refocusing her attention. The scene before her is sobering, a reminder of his ability to switch between full-blown mania and something resembling relaxed ambivalence. There’s a tension in the air, something driving her to provoke him, to poke an already angry hornet’s nest with a large stick.

The Doctor needs to get out, needs him to snap and make a mistake. She needs to _focus_.

“I take it you upheld your end of the bargain. No more threats of execution, disintegration… extermination?”

The Master carefully sets down the book he was reading- something by HG Wells, another science fiction novel she knows he’s reading (mostly for the irony.) She circles around him slowly, trailing light fingertips across the edge of the armchair.

“I’m a free man now," says the Master. 

He smiles at her and gestures to the chair opposite him. She doesn’t take a seat- her legs are cramped from being restrained for so long, so the stretch is welcome. The height difference between them is more striking too this way. Whilst she cannot grow taller, she appreciates the opportunity to look down on him in any way she can.

She needs to press his buttons-- anything she can think of to make him angry. There are many things this incarnation loathes, so many pressure points- it’s only a matter of which one to pick.

“You aren’t a free man, Master, you never have been. You’re on borrowed time.”

He shoots her an amused look, one eyebrow raised in a question. His expression is guarded.

“Believe me, I’m aware of that.” 

At that, The Doctor forces a smirk and feels a wave of cold discomfort wash over her. There is something so foreign about guarding herself in front of an enemy who has done the same thing his whole life.

“But there’s so little time left. Why play with me like this? Force me to help you. Why don't you… force the life from me instead, yeah? Master. Wouldn’t that help?”

She expects the words to make an impact, or at the very least elicit some sort of response, but the Master stays still, blinking calmly. Shadow the cat is the only one to sense the threat, curling inwards against the leg of the chair.

A brief moment of quiet consideration. Then, an answer.

“I’m sure you’d rather die, dearest. That’s how a hate-hate relationship works," he says smoothly. 

“And I’m sure you’d like to see that.”

He chuckles. Despite the laughter, she can tell the air around them has changed since the charged stillness only a moment earlier. The Master’s mental walls have raised almost instinctively. Something she had said or insinuated perhaps, or is it the cruel smile still plastered to her face?

The Doctor persists.

“Somebody told me something recently. A friend of mine. Made me realise.”

The word ‘friend’ almost ruins the whole disguise. Strangely, ‘friend’ was one of the few words left that couldn’t cover their relationship. He didn’t need to know that.

“Go on, please bore me with the details.”

She leans back on her heel and begins to regard him properly, sitting there like he isn't trying his hardest not to let the damage show. The Doctor takes a deep breath.

“I don’t hate you, I can’t. You know what I feel, really, when it comes down to it?” She digs her thumb into the space in the middle of her chest, “It’s not hate. You don’t deserve my hate. You deserve my _pity_.”

The Master tilts his head like he is thinking. The fire in the corner keeps on smouldering; she thinks perhaps she’d expected to blow it out with the force of her words. 

“I’m touched," he says, smiling in that trademark way, all teeth, eyes almost glowing with the anticipation of what she will say. It makes her gut churn.

“I don’t know why you smile. This theatre, Master, doesn’t it demean you?”

The Master’s smile flattens out and he sighs, sounding worn, stretching himself out on the seat cushion. There’s a hint of caution in the way his eyes flit away to the chair opposite him.

“Sit down, Doctor.”

“I’m fine where I am.”

The Master narrows his eyes and watches as she positions herself in front of him, bang in the middle of the room’s natural line of symmetry.

“You were fine where you were on the floor too, I expect.”

“You hold no power over me. If I wanted to get out, I would have.” Maybe she would have, if the possibility of her leaving weren’t just some empty threat.

“Then why stay? Show me your power, Doctor, if you are that impressive," he challenges. Gloating, baiting, almost ready to snap.

She avoids the question, deflects it back at him.

“Why keep me here? You know I’m a threat.”

“Believe it or not, your company is a rare commodity I don’t have the luxury of these days.”

“Why? Because I always beat you, is that it? Because you know I’d never humour you like this. Yours is a very low level to stoop to, Master.”

That blow lands. He’s frowning now, internalising the usually explosive nature of his anger. She gives him some time to come up with a witty retort, but The Master seems to be considering something else.

“I saw the ship taking off when I first took you here, Doctor. My TARDIS scanned for traces of Time Lord DNA." The Master pauses, meeting her stormy glare with his own, “You can imagine my surprise when it picked up two matches.” 

The Doctor’s blood freezes. He’s looking straight at her now, seeing through.

“I should hope my future self had the good sense to get far away from you.”

She opens her mouth, but her expression gets lost somewhere along the line and forms into a thin smile.

“He won’t.” 

“And why is that?”

She can’t lie to him. She needs a way out.

“Because he can’t.”

The Doctor lifts a hand to her neck and traces a single finger down the side.

_Somewhere halfway across the Universe, a man in chains cries out into the darkness._

The Masters face darkens.

“I am not your prisoner.”

“But you are," she hisses, "you have been. Your entire life.”

He snarls and rises from his chair, head tilted forward to shield his body, cat-like. They prowl around each other for a few seconds before finally meeting in the middle and coming to a stop a few centimetres away. Their breath mingles in the small space between them. He is taller but somehow, she has the higher ground.

“I don’t quite follow.” The Master hisses, his frame shaking with an unusual restraint.

“Harm me and he dies.”

She can feel the weight of his presence pressing against her mental walls-- the elastic band, so to speak, stretched out before it flies through the air. The Master’s mind is burning through itself; she can almost see the calculations: what to say, how far to push, how fast to move.

Behind him, Shadow is still, yellow eyes glowing amongst a mass of dark fur. The cat’s eyes are wide circles now, pupils fully blown in the light of the fire. There’s a pent-up urge there to spring away, run from here and curl into tiny cranny. The cat is free to run wherever it likes. So why does it stay? 

The Doctor waits for him to speak, the pressure in her gut building into a horrible nausea. The urge to reach out to him is overpowering, dizzying. A fresh flood of tears wells up in the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill out any moment now. And still she can’t say a thing.

_I’m sorry._

The Master blinks.

“Get out.”

The Doctor lingers for a second before turning toward the door and striding out of the room, shooting one last look around the library. Electricity still crackles about her as she leaves through the door. But now there is nothing to stop the walls around her from breaking down. 

She walks away from the room and for the second time in a lifetime, The Doctor cries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm closing the contest on my twitter @ineternity_ao3 tomorrow! Please enter, you could get a free fic out of it!
> 
> I promise this is the last time I plug myself but it's for a worthy cause. :)


	11. eleven: velvet and vainglorious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I can't think. I can't breathe. I can't speak.
> 
> Still separated, The Doctor finds herself with a rare opportunity that may offer her some control over the Master. After a shaky agreement, the two travel to a planet The Doctor has only been once before. She needs to escape him, get far away, find Her Master, rescue Laika... Oh. And save the Universe, as always.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was so desperate to get this up that I did not get it Beta-d. Oops.
> 
> As you can see this is fucking long. This chapter is a bit of a pivot point so I wanted to make it significant and 2000 or so words didn't really do that for me. As I wrote, I had about 3 deadline hence why this is so late too.
> 
> I'm so looking forward to what comes after this. As I said, the story is going to go in a bit of a different direction from now (not drastically, don't panic!) as I have now planned to the end and know what I want to do.

52 days remaining

Even in the seconds after she has left the library, The Doctor knows she’s made a mistake. After that, she doesn’t see him again for a long time. The ship’s clock displays only a few days have passed but it feels more like weeks. Without a friend to bounce off, she is left to wander The Master’s TARDIS.

The walk is more like a meander. Anything that catches her attention she will follow after for a short while before the trail ends. Like the console room, many of the objects are littered in disparate piles over the ship’s utilitarian floors and up the walls. The objects are mostly weapons, dead to the touch and long since powered down. None of them offer any escape from her current incarceration.

She’s retracing her steps to the ship’s communications room when she falls, staggering into the metal below, the weight of the air crushing her into the floor. The grating below is hard and cold, even as steam rises from the engines below.

The Doctor cries out and tries to scramble upright, meeting a wall of resistance like the empty space above is made of concrete. Something sharp is pressing into her shoulder, holding it to the ground. Inside, her mental walls are flexing and squeezing in on themselves, crushing every stray thought of escape into a ball of pain.

There something trying to pierce her mind. At first she thinks it might be the ship but when has the Master’s TARDIS ever attacked her like this? The sharpness is getting sharper, the feeling of the floor getting more and more real against her skin. There’s a new pressure burning in her head and it’s building, building, building, searing hot through her head. She’s going to explode, the whole ship around her too. Burning, burning, burning-

_Doctor!_

The voice screams. The sound of it so raw it takes her a few seconds to realise who it belongs to. The burning is so hot in her head now, link flaring as she fumbles for words.

_Master-_

_Help me! Please help me. It hurts! Doctor, please!_

_Where are you?_

The voice breaks away for a second, contemplating, before breaking out into a pained howling. The sound of it send a horrible chill down her spine, so cold it cuts through the hot pain in the very core of her.

_It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts-_

She feels the moisture stinging at the edges of her eyes. The hurt she feels is _his_ \- and it’s swallowing her.

_I need you to focus. Do you know where you are?_

_It’s too dark. I can’t think, I don’t know. I don’t know where I am, Doctor, please!_

The link flares, sending a fresh wave of pain through her mind. Through it, she can hear two hushed voices talking frantically in the distance.

_Listen to me. I’m going to get you out of there. Are you safe?_

_Safe?_

_Yes. Are you somewhere no one can hurt you?_

He reels back. At that moment, the connection breaks off. Her mind-space closes its walls around nothing.

_Master._ She tries, tentatively dipping into the space where he had been. The link fizzles in response, strung tight across the distance between them. The Doctor tries again.

_Are you there?_

The response comes, link thinned so much that the thoughts come through as drips, cutting off in the middle of sentences.

_Won’t help me. Too weak. Stupid Master, stupid, stupid, stupid._

_No, Master-_ she cries but the connection has already severed. A fierce headache takes his place, pounding in time to the beat of her hearts.

In the relative fog of the corridor, she is suddenly aware of a thick mechanical smell. Acrid oils and crude trails of smoke are hanging threateningly in the already thick air in front of her. The pain is gone just as quickly as it had arrived.

The Master is far.

Too far away for her to sense him, so beyond at least a galaxy’s reach. Far enough away for only the faintest trace of agony to leak through their bond. What had he said? _Too dark_ , so somewhere concealed- a cell perhaps. Unless he was within the Miros cluster, The Master would be able to see a moon if it were night-time.

From the sound of the voices nearby, the area would need to be able to host humanoid inhabitants with spoken language capabilities. Humanoids with a concept of sociality, survival instincts. Somewhere it would be acceptable to show fear. By the strength of the bond, somewhere in their shared history.

There was only one planet matching that description.

“Enjoying it down there, Doctor?”

The Doctor looks up from her position on the floor, her train of thought grinding to an abrupt halt.

“And here I was thinking I’d have to force you to submit to me.”

The Master stands above her, mouth curved into a queasy smile. She can tell there’s something he wants to ask her, nothing he can do without demeaning her first, of course.

The Doctor narrows her eyes, clenches her fists and clambers to her feet.

“Nobody’s doing any submitting.”

He chuckles and lifts a hand to stroke the sides of his hideous, greying goatee.

“As you know, Doctor, I’m now a free man. I can take my TARDIS anywhere in the universe.”

“No need for the exposition, what do you want?”

“You’re going to travel with me.”

“What?”

“Whilst I do not pretend to understand how you occupy yourself with the company of humans, I would find it worthwhile to have your company- as my prisoner, of course.” He adds quickly, offering his hand to her in what anyone else may have mistaken to be gentlemanly concern.

“Obviously.”

The Doctor schools her revulsion and starts to walk away.

“I will take that as acceptance enough.”

She stops.

“Acceptance of what? What do you expect me to do?”

There’s a glimmer in his eye, a creeping smile on his lips. Dangerous, so very dangerous.

“So, Doctor, you choose. Which planet would you like to destroy next?”

The Doctor pauses, hearts pounding. She has a choice. Where to save the Master? There could only be one planet. She can’t be wrong, not this time.

“Carnathon. I want to go to Carnathon.”

-

It takes the TARDIS a few minutes to land on the planet, a time she wishes she did not have to spend avoiding the gaze of its pilot.

Carnathon hasn’t changed much since her last visit. The same lakes still cover the planet’s surface, untouched by the blistering heat of the air. Even the forest trees have multiplied, swarming the high rises and skyscrapers in swathes of kamikaze green. She remembers the tranquillity of it, the sigh of the grasses in the breeze, even steely executioners watching the bird’s flight from the lake.

The Master has chosen to land in one of Carnathon’s outer boundaries, a few miles away from the capital’s centre- their presence musn’t attract too much attention lest the planned destruction be interrupted. There is evidence of life as soon as they land, the same high collared men and women parading around in long ceremonial capes the fabric gliding over the pebbles of the paths below. Not one seems to notice the sudden appearance of an extra stone sculpture, the people are so busy walking inside their designated spaces and transport routes to cast an eye away for even a second.

She feels the shackles The Master has restrained her with pulling her hands together tightly. Of course, she can’t be a pet without a proper leash.

He is buzzing with barely contained relish beside her, finally justified in his destruction. At every opportunity so far, he has relished digging into her, questioning, provoking.

“Interesting choice, Doctor. Here to remind me of all my ‘crimes, are you?”

“Oh, you have no idea.”

The Master flashes her an oblivious smile and sets off along the nearest pathway.

As they walk, they are subjected to a few stares; foreigners are rare, even more so foreigners in shackles with leads attached. She wonders how the Carnathions have survived, dedicated to executing their own people for so long that their own gene pool has shrunk to the size of just a few large families. She imagines they won’t be around for much longer.

The link in her head from earlier has returned, fizzling away stronger now like she has stoked a furnace within herself. From the strength of her headache, it appears she has found the right galaxy if not the right planet. All she needs to do is make The Master stick around on the planet long enough to find him.

“Tell me Doctor, do you think these houses are flammable? I’d so enjoy a little heat.”

Easier said than done. The Doctor thinks hard. The voices she had heard sounded like they’d been talking in a shared dialect, so perhaps close to a large population centre.

“It’s more interesting in the city.” And closer to the holding cells, she doesn’t add. “Why burn here when the buildings are so far apart?”

“You make such a lovely point. Come.” He tugs at the chains binding her hands together and she trips after him, stumbling over the stones on the path.

The Master takes great pleasure in stopping the locals and disrupting the long line of commuters behind them. The Carnathions maintain a calm yet infuriated façade, barely holding back from spitting the directions to the transport station in his face.

After a fair amount of time has passed, they board a small transit pod to the centre of the city. The Doctor sits beside the window as her captor stares beady eyed at the other carriage-dwellers. The countryside of Carnathon is bleak, like it has been shaved bare of any natural resources and flattened into uniform fields of blue-green grass straws. Occasionally there is a small stone hut, these get more frequent as they near the capital.

The link is getting stronger now, she can’t hear him but there are traces of metal in her mouth, a coppery taste of fresh blood. She has found the right planet at least.

The pod stops and the other passengers file out of the doors in single file. As they leave, The Master tears one of the information posters from the wall, offsetting the carriage’s grid of perfectly arranged displays. The picture slumps and crumples into a ball on the floor and the exquisitely kept appearance of the carriage is ruined.

“My, my this _is_ a treat.”

He cackles and kicks one of the pebbles from a neatly fenced rockery into the street outside the pod-stop. A few passers-by wince and turn away in disgust, suddenly finding much more urgent places to be.

“Which one? Where should I start, Doctor?”

She looks ahead. In their path are skyscrapers, banks, auction houses, jails, all contained within blocks. Like Canary Wharf- still not over that, she thinks- but with more squares. The sight of it all is dazzling. The scale of the stone creations seems impossible. Coupled with the glare of the floodlights above them, it is _painful._

In her head, the link scrambles and seizes. All of a sudden she can’t tell where she is anymore, the bio-dampeners on the lamps above casting a dizzying light onto the top of her head.

In her daze, The Doctor wheezes and is carried forward by the swimming of her surroundings. The Master walks on, unaffected, dragging her behind. His head is seemingly clear of the light’s influence as he monologues to her.

“Potential for destruction. Shame about the stone. What do you think, Doctor? Where would you like to start?”

The Doctor schools her brain into forming words. She has come this far; she had thought ahead beforehand but now the thoughts aren’t making sense. The weight of the shackles is grating on her wrists. _Ignore the pain, focus on your words._

“I have a proposal.” She forces, though her teeth are gritted uncomfortably.

“Oh?”

_Yes, exactly._ She thinks, before kicking herself at his stupid pun again.

“The holding cells. Wooden exteriors, remember? Sonic-proofed. Free some criminals, rain hell, all that.” She fumbles, there is now a migraine brewing behind her eyes. The Master grins in approval.

“My, aren’t you handy? I might keep you around.”

“Please don’t.”

“Giddy up then pet.”

Her hearts skip a little as the two of them begin to move down the street, dipping in and out of the little plazas that bookmark the end of each row. Along the roads are lines of of stone monoliths, each with a slightly different curve to them and a line of indistinguishable scribble, presumably Carnathion’s language system.

The signs she does manage to decipher point towards a large monolith at the end of the road she assumes houses Carnathon’s official police force. She’s beginning to hear voices in her head now that aren’t coming from the square around them, whispered conversations in deathly silence. They all point to the same place.

They are almost at the entrance to the building when The Master turns away. The Doctor’s stomach drops.

“Where are you going?” She gasps out, her chains yanking her further and further away from the entrance. The voices are so loud, the link pressing so tightly into her head that it is cutting. Her Master had been so close but he is fading away as the distance grows.

“Unfortunately for you, Doctor, you aren’t my boss.”

“But-“

A shock jolts through the handcuffs and she cries out.

“Do I have to repeat myself?”

“No, Master.”

And so they walk on from migraine to headache to blackout, passing citizens and officials who really should care about the woman in chains in front of them. Eventually The Master stops, several blocks away from the jailhouses.

The nearest building is so tall it extends past the planet’s inner-most cloud layer and safely into the stratosphere. Around the front, there are hundreds of Carnathions buzzing about from station to station, many of them holding small tablets similar to the ones she had seen at Missy’s execution.

The look on The Master’s face is one she has seen may times before. Eyes narrowed; teeth bared like he still has fangs. Horror grips her.

“Master, you can’t- this is sacred ground-“ She protests but it only makes him more determined.

“Excellent. A worthwhile fight.”

She tries to pull away but the leash only tightens around her wrists. The Doctor falls at the foot of the door, panting with the exertion of keeping upright, on her hands and knees. It’s not enough to keep them from being noticed by the small welcoming committee in the reception of the court house.

“Greetings visitors. Could I take your names?”

“My, what a warm welcome. My name is Major Kreer,” Not even an anagram, “This is my serf, we’re attending the court today- which way is the Magistrate’s?”

The Carnathion points towards a large door in the centre of the room. There is very little in the way of decoration around the place apart from the gilding of the door itself, golden grids cover the surface, forming a glistening square face- an idol, holy man.

The Doctor hisses from her place on the ground and receives a small shock through the handcuffs, forcing her face into the ground.

“Apologies, my pet is a little sensitive.”

She lifts her head to take a fresh look around the room. The lights are making her vision swim and dance around, rainbows flashing in front of her eyes in disparate blotches. There’s a throbbing in the back of her head growing stronger and stronger. The link should be burning, piercing through her defences even at this proximity. Instead, all she feels is a panicked ache- and a horribly removed headache.

“Master.”

“Yes, pet.” He coos.

“Take me back.”

The Master chuckles. She is yanked into the foyer of the court, the polished marble floor making it easy to slide as she is pulled.

“Bad dog.”

The Doctor grits her teeth, inhaling a cold mouthful of air through them and tries to drag herself upright. None of the receptionists seem to care that she is now crawling through the foyer of the court.

Her Master isn’t here, she needs to stop this before he can start an interplanetary war. The two of them are standing- crawling- on sacred ground. Holy, blessed walls. There must be priests swarming every floor, every room.

Instead of staying in the entrance, The Master strides towards the door in the middle and shoves it open with a rough hand.

Inside, the courtroom air is hot, clammy, crammed, unlike the relative freshness of the entrance. The Doctor can feel all the eyes in the room trained on them both as they step into the seating area. Visitors must be permitted here to worship Carnathon’s justice system, though closely monitored and restricted only to the raised dock.

The Master hums and takes a seat beside a pair of wealthy looking onlookers. Their jewellery reminds her of the couple that had bought Laika just a few days ago. Laika. Her fault. Still so much her fault.

She decides that she will wait until the jury go for recess and make a break for the door. She still has her sonic somewhere, not reachable with her hands like this but still in her jacket pocket. The chain cannot hold if jolted hard enough.

“Watch and learn, Doctor.” Says The Master, “They’re incredibly efficient at trials here. We may even get to see an execution.”

“Hooray.”

“Stoning do you think? Or burning. I could always hasten the process.” He whispers.

“No!” She hisses, attracting the attention of the watchers on either side of the court.

The entirety of the room is painted a regal white and gold. Either side of them are two raised docks overlooking a small square cage, inside is a shield of bright, piercing lasers. On a raised platform overlooking it sits a large man in a square hat, looming ominously over the floor. In his right hand a small sceptre glistens, in the pommel is a garnet stone- crimson, dangerous, the colour of blood.

Beneath them, a set of double doors swings open. Although nobody comes out, the room falls into an even quieter stillness.

“All rise.” What she assumes is a Bailiff calls from a doorway beside the cage. The judge nods his head in acknowledgement and the courtroom rises to its feet. Beside her, The Master stays in his seat, holding her down by the scruff of her jacket, now frayed and damaged.

A few of the onlookers stare but The Master doesn’t seem to care as he surveys the side of the room, eyes fixating on any trace of wood. She can’t see his TCE though she assumes it’s under his robe somewhere. The weapon has passed through the security beams easily. The Carnathions in the room are unarmed, seemingly peaceful in the large sterile space of the court, hands clasped in a praying motion as they rise to welcome the speech of the judge.

“You may be seated.”

The people around them slump back onto the chairs, falling at odd angles, holding their heads lolling as if their very spirit has left them.

“Master.” She whispers to him, tugging lightly at the chains that bind her hands.

“Be quiet, dear, I’m thinking.”

“Master. There’s a weapons field. You can’t shoot.”

“Who said anything about shooting?”

She grits her teeth tighter.

“We are here to witness a trial. I believe you are all here out of respect. I must ask you to uphold the sanctity of this courtroom and remain silent throughout the proceedings.”

“May the prosecution step forth.”

A small, dark man steps from the side of the raised platform. There are studs adorning his eyebrows and a large coronet fastened to the top of his head. A few gasps echo around the chamber. The Master’s eyes practically glisten in the dull light of the room.

“Your Lordship. Your presence is an honour.”

The king. The king of the Carnathon Cluster, ruler of Mystraxi, blessed Knight of SVF-6. Completely unguarded.

“I wish to execute, Judge. A painful sentence for the wrongs done to me by this _creature_.” The King spits.

“Present your charges my Lordship.”

“I present these charges before the court.” He steps forward to face the space in the centre of the room, “Gross genocide, the murder of millions, the abduction of my daughter.” The King bangs his staff on the floor. The echo of it rings in the stillness of the room. “I command you. Kill the prisoner.”

The Judge nods and taps something on his lectern.

“The prisoner is sentenced to death.”

The jury nod unanimously, a blanket look of disgust present on all of their faces.

“Thank you, Judge. May I have the honour of termination?”

“My Lord. The duty is allotted to you. Do as you wish.”

The king nods and bangs his staff on the floor. The noise triggers a searing pain in her head. She does not want to see this, somehow, she must reach the door and escape him. Get out for as long as it takes to find him.

The panel in the middle of the cage is rising from the floor, a slight lip of marble peeking over the edge of the floor now as the cage above makes way for its new occupant. The coroneted man scowls and brandishes a large tablet in his hand, his hands quivering over the sight of the platform.

“What do you think? Should I kill the prisoner or the king?”

“You can’t make me choose-“ She blurts, more loudly than she’d hoped.

“King it is.” He whispers back.

“ _No_!”

They are causing a commotion. Some of the Carnathions on the stand have noticed and are turning their heads to stare.

“Very well. I’ll start with the jury.”

Inside the cage she can see the top of a transparent container begin to rise out of the floor, slowly revealing more and more of the chains inside it. There is a creature there but it is invisible under the bindings.

“Do the whole building instead-“ She stalls, “Win, win. Everybody dies.”

He chuckles.

As the cage is filled below, she can barely make out the body of the prisoner underneath the thick chains. She hopes whatever they do to him will be quick, quicker than the massacre The Master has in mind anyway.

“Under Carnathion Law,” The judge intones from the stand and directs a small nod towards the king. “You are sentenced to death.”

It can’t be more than a second that she looks away, a millisecond in which the platform below rises to the top of the cage and settles with a small hiss.

The Doctor looks back. The ache in her head screams.

He is there. The Master is there, trembling.

She’s never seen his eyes so wide, shining in the bright court light. Lips parted as he draws in tiny, shaking breaths. Surrounding his body are thick Azbantium chains, gripping so tightly she feels it in her own arms. He is so scared, she can feel it permeating the air, a ghost of the man Iicha had taken.

The king is smiling now, swinging his staff like a pendulum. Side-to-side, side-to-side. His dark coronet is tinged with the white of the room, the jewels on the staff a bloody red.

On the floor beneath her, the whirring of an engine starting up fills the room. The Doctor feels the nausea creep up her throat again and lodge at the front of her throat. There’s weakness in her limbs as she stares on, each handcuffed arm suddenly flooded with the feeling of powerlessness. The clasps of the restraints jangle together as she struggles and it makes her hearts _burst_ into a horrible, dizzying sprint.

“Any last words?”

His gaze seeks her out like a searchlight in the crowd, nostrils flaring as shallow breaths overtake him. Their eyes lock together across the thick air; one pair widened, the other narrowed and reddened with the sting of heavy tears. They cannot move. This was never how it was meant to end. Not like this. They cannot speak, they cannot touch, there is only the feral, _primal_ scream that connects them. The long pain of their lives.

He is screaming in her head, only one word.

_Doctor._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!!!!!!!!! (:0)
> 
> Obligatory end notes:
> 
> The competition on my Twitter closed and it was won by Melkur_Mistress so on the way soon is some Thrissy fluff (I am capable of writing happy things, I assure you). I'm also taking part in the DWMasters Big Bang with a story I am thinking of calling Silk and Sleight. I'm 2000 words in and I can already tell it's going to be a pleasure to upload when it finally gets done.


	12. twelve: shuttle one-nine-o-five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'A horse (Cyberium), a horse (Cyberium)! My kingdom (life) for a horse (Cyberium)!' 
> 
> The Master finds himself despised and needed at the same time. Iicha shows more of her true colours. Thoughts of The Doctor  
> unfortunately do not subside in her absence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Twelve- alternatively known as 'If this fic was a film they'd have to put it up to an R-Rating for all the fucks'.  
> (All these fucks and no fucking? No! This is a Teen Audiences and Up fic!)

Six days earlier.

Blue. Red, red, red, red. Blue. Red, red, red, red. Blue.

It is a little like being on a helter-skelter. The exteriors of passing passenger-ships are striped with carnival colours to mark the various tour companies that operate them. The Master watches as they fly by, once every sixty rels or so, to the Kadavron system. Each ship that passes screeches noisily as it overtakes, thrusters sputtering high-pitched whines into the vacuum of otherwise silent space outside.

Blue. Red. Blue. Red.

It has been a little under a day since they left Avaxus. With every ship, the wire around The Master’s brains grows tighter and tighter. So far in now, digging barbs and drawing out whatever last dregs of blood that are left in there.

Iicha’s ship is neither a tourist vessel nor a pleasure cruiser. Rather, it appears the architects have saved on money by making the seats out of a thick cardboard so porous that the blood he had been dripping since his capture has now soaked into the seat and is staining it a silvery red.

Red, red, red. Blue. Red.

Orange.

Every time the cockpit doors open, he feels the movement of them vibrate through the ship’s walls.

So far they had opened three times, each visit marked by the reluctant throwing of a ration square and a few coldly answered questions.

Keeping me, are you? _Yes._

Make you feel better? _Yes._

Alive or dead? _Irrelevant, as long as you shut the fuck up._

Anger issues? _Fuck you._

The last of his inquiries had been met with a ration square to the face. A few minutes later, Iicha had turned down the heating and let him shiver in the frosty cabin air. Too cold to be hospitable to humans- she must know he’s a Time Lord then. Such a cruel mistress.

Just before his body tips over into Hypothermia, his captor opens the door and strolls into the artificial light of the hold. A wave of heat meets the cold air of the room, making tiny pins and needles pop up at the ends of his fingertips.

“Morning.” The Master croaks.

Iicha closes the shutter on the windows, landing the inside of the cabin in complete darkness and making it impossible for him to eye up the wounds on his arms.

“Prefer the dark then.” He wheezes, voice choked with the exertion of staying vertical. “I get that.”

Iicha doesn’t answer and instead returns to the cockpit, slamming open the grungy set of adjoining doors and sending harsh shudders through his metal restraints.

Red, red. Blue. Orange. Blue. Green.

He can’t see the ships passing anymore but he imagines them nonetheless.

The Master wonders whether the taste of blood in the air is from him or simply Iicha’s unexplainable rage casting a bitter aura into the space, suffocating him. On second thoughts, it could just be the Curry flavoured ration pack.

She has answered every one of his questions. He had hoped for talkative but instead Iicha is cutting, factual. The razor edge to her voice so sharp it makes corners of his brains wince.

Blue, blue, blue. Orange. Red. Blue.

There is nothing else he can do so, like in almost every waking day he spends, the Master waits. It’s all he seems to do now. This is how time is divided, between waiting and hurting. The two intermingle, sometimes the pain is harshest when he has little to focus on. Sometimes it is harshest around her. When their bodies skim against each other, even at the smallest point of contact and it is like he is burning again. At the brush of a hand his skin will burst into a million tiny pores of hot flame, making him retreat further and further into himself.

“You kept me, Doctor.” He says out loud. “Why did you keep me.”

The peep of a tiny strip of light from beneath the shutters is the last thing he sees before drifting into unconsciousness.

The vacuum of space draws in.

The Master’s sleep is interrupted a few hours later by the sound of the cockpit doors juddering open. Iicha is behind them, leaning against the doorframe with a cigarette stub between her lips. He forces his eyes shut again, squeezing his eyelids closed tight enough to hurt.

The ship is still moving without a pilot- the gas kept on by an autopilot, swerving its way through the debris ahead of them. He presumes they’re crossing an asteroid field, something too treacherous to navigate by hand.

“Wake up shit-stick.”

The Master’s tight eyes creak open a fraction, letting the barely visible light of the glow lamps shock his head into coherence. His expression looks more like a crocodile stare in the ship’s gloom.

“You got something we need so sober up and start talking.

“We.” The Master grunts. His lungs already too depleted for any other sound to come.

“They told me I had to give you a choice so, you gonna negotiate?”

The Master’s eyes skim round the room, scouring the walls for the signs of a hidden camera. He doesn’t find much past the grunge that coats the ship, along every surface is a layer of grime so thick that even something the size of a large Polaroid could have sat comfortably inside.

“Negotiate.” He echoes, using what little arm strength he has left to pull himself upright against the wall that restrains him.

“Yeah, what do you want?”

A few things occur to him then, the most notable being that he doesn’t actually have any idea what he wants. Freedom, sure. A release from this? Yes. He can’t tell how long the Cyberium will take to make its way through the rest of his body. The best he can hope for is a few hours, the worst, perhaps, a couple of days.

“You know.” The Master wheezes, voice rising and falling over the words. “What I want.”

Iicha smirks.

“You’re gonna die. Wish I could be happy about that but I’m not the one doing the killing so…” She trails off and clicks her teeth in what sounds like disappointment. “Give up the Cyber-shit and we can get some sort of deal.”

The Cyberium edges to the front of his mind, suddenly an active spectator of the conversation. It’s very presence seems to lend him an electric stream of energy. _Fight back_. It says.

“You’ll let me go then? Fab.”

Iicha blinks, dumbfounded.

“No.”

“And why not?”

“You’re on trial for execution. Last time someone-“Iicha stops, schooling the wave of resentment that he can see colouring her cheeks. “Interrupted.” She finishes the sentence with a hiss of distaste.

“Execution?” The knot inside his throat pulses and drops lower, sinking right to the very bottom of his chest and settling. The waiting time is over now, the pain is going to begin again. “My execution. Yeah.”

“Give up whatever the fuck you’ve got. I know the Cybermen gave you something, give it up and they’ll give you a fair trial.”

The Master scoffs halfheart(s)edly.

“I’ll lose.”

It’s almost comical the way emotion creeps into his voice at that. He considers playing into it, convince her he cares about the deal and then snatch it away at a moment of crisis.

“I don’t give a shit. You’ll be alive long enough for the jury to at least pretend to consider you. Dying with honour, that sort of thing?”

“Nah.” The Master shakes his head, a little over-vigorously, and screws up his eyes, blocking the migraine behind them from searing across his forehead.

“Did I say deal? I meant to say that you don’t actually have a choice.”

“Choice, huh?”

He starts to laugh softly. The exertion of it takes his breath away. In only a few seconds, the cabin fades.

When his surroundings come back into view, everything feels warmer. The gloom of the cabin has been illuminated by a small window, silhouetting the crouched figure of Iicha and a hipflask.

“You passed out.”

The Master wheezes slightly, emitting a small whine, and falls into a slump.

“Cyberium for a dignified death. Got it.”

“The Doctor won’t be there.” His captor sneers.

“I didn’t ask for her.”

“You’re a fucking mess.” Iicha hisses. “And it’s obvious. You can cut the tension with a knife. Maybe if you’d started fucking her earlier-“

The Master’s handcuffs jolt against the wall, the Cyberium flaring violently.

“We don’t _fuck_.”

“Whatever you call it then.” Iicha stretches out from her crouched position and throws him a triumphant glare. “Just don’t expect any airs and graces. You’re going to die. It’ll be agonising.”

“Fantastic. One question.”

“Shoot.” Iicha snorts, putting her hand on the holster just below her belt.

“If I’m on trial then who’s the prosecution?”

“My dad.”

“Swell.” Says the Master.

She smiles coldly and begins to pull away.

“Nutri-square.” He croaks, the red curtain of frenzy swooping over his vision again.

Iicha tosses him a small white packet. It lands on the floor in front of him. He has to kick it towards his mouth before he can chew off the wrapping and into the small flavourless package below. _Like a dog._ It muffles the pain for a while.

His captor re-enters the cockpit, slamming the rusted doors behind her. Across the room, a still-smoking cigarette falls from its perch.

_I wonder what you’d say._ He thinks.

The Master imagines The Doctor, every shining curve of her painted by rays of silver starlight. Her golden crown of hair splayed out in a halo across empty space. She is speaking to him, mouth open in composed nonchalance but the words are muffled. Instead, he studies the way the lights of the cosmos dance on her pale complexion.

She is soft on the surface but hardened just beneath, as if he could touch her and the skin might break off to reveal underneath it a glistening idol.

If the Doctor didn’t flinch at each touch, that was.

The Master’s mind grows darker and he pictures himself unlocking a door. Inside is the dry, red of Karn. He remembers his hands around her throat, the soft animal flesh caving beneath his fingers. How her mouth had fluttered at the sensation, each barely taken breath colouring her cheeks a darker red.

He had wanted her to hang there, teetering on the precipice of unconsciousness, falling between fleeting life and _his_ realm. At the same time wishing it was her hands and his neck.

Just a little further and-

“I can hear you brooding from here, keep it in your fucking pants!”

The Master lets out a groan. Death really couldn’t come any faster.

The flight of Shuttle-One-Nine-O-Five goes on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so, so, sorry this chapter didn't come any sooner! I have been taken on a wild goose chase by about seven things happening at once, including my exam results which come next week. Sorry it's shorter than usual but I got everything in there I wanted to get it so I think I'm good!


	13. thirteen: i think i will cause problems on purpose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Master's timeline catches up with The Doctor's, Iicha has daddy issues and The Master realises just how bad things actually are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realised the other day how little time I will have to write anything when I'm at Uni and that seems to have given me a bit of a kick up the arse to start writing now and fast.
> 
> Please, I live for comments and feedback- it absolutely makes my day. :)

**Trigger Warning for Desc. of Violence & Choking. I have put little ** signs where the choking scene starts and ends so if that isn't your thing you can skip. :)**

“Hurry the fuck up. You’re dragging.”

“I’m dying.”

“All the more reason for speed. Come _on_.”

The shuttle had landed around an hour ago in the wilderness of a planet he didn’t recognise. Upon their arrival, Iicha had clamped a chain around his wrists and dragged him along after her, muttering under her breath about ‘protocols’ and ‘dads’.

“And you couldn’t park any closer.” He complains.

To his exasperation, The Master has survived longer than anticipated. Far longer, in fact.

It has been five days since he has last seen The Doctor and Laika. For reasons he can’t understand, the Cyberium has taken a backseat, preferring to let him follow blindly after Iicha instead of interfering at every sharp word or angry kick to the stomach.

“No.”

The two of them trudge onwards, The Master barely suppressing the overwhelming urge to shout ‘are we nearly there yet?”.

The forest around them is close, the branches barely missing the tops of their heads. The Master thinks that the trees look a lot like the monkey-puzzle trees on Earth, each one has arms full of thick looking spines that leave a large space for the blue of the mid-afternoon sky to lighten up the forest floor.

Iicha walks ahead of him, hand firm on the chain that binds his wrists together. She seems to know the route through the forest, stopping only occasionally to change direction or sniff at the air.

There is a slight breeze that rustles through the lower canopy that keeps blowing his hair over his face, making the path beneath him impossible to see.

When the wind changes direction, the Master tosses aside a long strand of hair only for it to come back and fall into his eyes again. In the same moment, Iicha tugs him forward and he stumbles over a tree root, suddenly finding himself head-first in the greenery.

His knees sting with the pain of the fall and he feels like a small child again, aching and red-faced.

As soon as it meets resistance, the chain slackens and the tugging stops. He tries to pick what is left of his body up from the undergrowth. Iicha is scowling down at him

“Here.” She snaps, lowering her hand to offer up a small hairband. The Master blinks and cautiously picks it from the palm of her hand. “It’s a hair band not the Crown Jewels, get a fucking move on or I’ll cut it off.”

The Master fits the bobble round his wrist and reaches round to the back of his head, suddenly met with a mass of unruly hair that hadn’t been there the last time he’d checked. If he gathers up the strands- _yes,_ like that- it can just about fit into a ponytail.

Iicha’s face sours.

“Give it back after you get executed, all right?”

“By your dad?” He replies.

“Yeah. By my dad.” Iicha snaps back.

He decides to push it. Nothing much to lose now.

“I thought your parents died.”

“They did. And you know who fucking killed them?” Iicha spits, The Master winces. “I meant Stepdad. Keep up.”

“He seems like a lovely man.” He mutters, receiving a hard tug in return.

“Yeah well he’s pretty pissed at you so-“ Iicha is cut off by the snap of a twig somewhere in the nearby woods. They stop, the chains clinking as they grow taut. “Stay absolutely still.” She mouths and The Master immediately feels like yelling.

_I think I will cause problems on purpose._ He thinks.

The single crunch turns into two, then three, then four. He can’t be certain but the snapping is getting closer.

_It’s behind us._

“It’s behind us.”

In almost comic the way they turn, in unison, like two cartoon characters.

“Afternoon gentlemen.” says The Master.

Standing in the middle of the forest is a mob of men with large sticks. Each of their faces is smeared with a thick clout of mud. Most of the crowd look to be in their forties or fifties and each packs a considerable girth of muscle.

Iicha seems uneasy beside him. Her hand move to grasp the handle of a small knife tucked just into the hem of her large army trousers.

“Hey, hey. We don’t want any trouble. I got a prisoner, alright? For the big courts.” She says, lighter already than her usual angry tone but with quiet threat laced beneath it.

“That’s our problem, miss. He don’t deserve a court.” The frontman spits towards The Master’s feet. “Let us take ‘im from ‘ere. We got very decent ideas about punishment, we do. None of that poxy gold you’re gettin’ would be enough for ‘im.”

Iicha visibly hardens, her hand clenches around the handle of the knife.

“I’ve told you to piss off. Do I have to tell you again?”

“I think you’d ‘ave to give us some incentive, miss.”

Iicha’s nails dig dangerously tightly into her fists, her fingers winding a circle around the knife, the crescent shapes of her nails leaving tiny dents in her dark skin.

“How about this, leave me and my prisoner alone or I’ll personally rip the heads from each of your screaming bodies.”

The man tilts his head, feigning interest in the mutters of the men around him. “Whaddya think, boys? She got a mouth on ‘er.”

There are shrieks from inside the crowd, a few men raise sticks in the air, another raises a lit torch.

“Last chance, leave and I’ll-“

Iicha doesn’t get to finish the rest of her sentence. The mob are stampeding towards them, makeshift weapons raised in fury and they are looking at _him_.

The Master’s vision shakes, the image of the crowd multiplying until there are hundreds and hundreds of people, mouths open in vicious roars.

Iicha looks back at him, he can’t see her face but she is shouting.

“Run!”

The Master runs, the restraints on his hands still tight in front of him. The chain attached to them rattles behind.

He doesn’t know how fast he is going but it isn’t quick enough to escape the cacophony of voices that chase behind.

“Murderer!” Scream the mob, “Gallifreyan scum! Planet butcher! King killer!”

Which planet? Which king? The Master grimaces as he runs, the adrenaline of the mob on his tail is keeping him just about fast enough to escape the frontrunner.

Just a little further and perhaps he will reach the edge of the forest or at least a clearing, somewhere he can find a tree to climb maybe-

He trips, foot catching on a tree trunk. A man is on him instantly, clawing at his bare arms and screaming in his ear.

“Murderer! You fucking murderer!”

The Master struggles under his grip, arms only taking the weight of the man for a second before he topples down again, teeth gnashing uncomfortably close.

There is dirt smeared in messy chunks across the man’s face, filling up the wrinkles under his eyes and chin. Any semblance of hair is matted with dirt that falls into The Master’s own face, making him blink and splutter.

They fight for an advantage, rolling over in the dirt as the rest of the crowd rally in the distance. It is a short battle, superior strength meeting broken limbs and tired, _tired_ eyes. As he struggles, The Master’s limbs drain of any adrenaline, leaving them limp and aching with exertion. His attacker seizes this and clamps both hands underneath his heavy, mud-caked shins.

“Who- are you?-“ he wheezes, kicking frantically upwards for any sort of contact. The man ignores him and focuses almost single-mindedly on exhausting whatever ounce of strength The Master has left in his arms.

“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you!”

He tries the last thing he can think of.

“I am the Master and you will-“

**

His speech is cut off by pair of large hands grasping his neck, thumbs digging painfully into his skin.

“You gonna blink once for no, twice for yes, yeah?”

The Master blinks twice, his throat caving under the pressure of the man’s hand. There isn’t enough air, the grip is like a clamp against him. There are no sharp fingernails left to leave a mark but the blunt force of it is painful enough to burn circles into his neck where the hand touches.

“Are ya sorry?”

The Master’s eyes widen slightly and he blinks three times.

“You know what you did. Our planet, Avaxus was _our planet_!” The man roars, his vice-grip only strengthening as he screams.

The Master blinks twice, the world swimming around in the water that is now seeping from his eyes.

“You sorry for killin’ my wife and kid?”

The Master blinks again, quickly repeating the action when the man lets out a feral scream just inches away from his face.

“You’re gonna go now, I’m gonna kill you.”

The hands tighten impossibly, only stopping when they reach stiff bone underneath.

He’s going to die.

The Master’s eyelashes flutter, bypass failing as the blue midday sky above starts to tinge a faint pink.

Theta had wanted to see a pink sky one day; though he supposes she’s seen millions by now. Thousands before he was even born.

The memory of that little boy still hangs at the back of his brain, telling him about the stars and the moons and the galaxies, picking mountain-crabs from the stream and not letting Koschei touch them, throwing handfuls of ceremony stones at his father’s window. Every moment is catalogued in a tiny corner of his brain, slowly being choked away. Oh, how they had run.

Here is Koschei, alone, staring out into the same sky they’d gazed at as kids, wishing he didn’t have to be so small.

“Hey, kid.” Growls the man. “You afraid to die?”

As the last of the air runs out, The Master lowers his eyelids. He needs to answer, if only to himself. The question, the oldest question of his lives.

Is he?

Is he afraid to die?

**

There is the sound of a shot nearby.

The answer is lost in the breeze that follows.

The man’s hands go limp against his neck and he falls forward, head crashing to the ground just above. The Master splutters to life, heaving in a noisy breath before rolling onto his side and coughing against the floor.

“Bastards.” Says Iicha, a small shotgun smoking in her hand as she drops the barrel of it towards the floor. “What a waste of ammo.”

He stays hunched and feels the cold shock of the air passing into him, eyes too clouded with moisture to see any further than the small patch of dirt below.

“Happy thoughts, huh? Strangulation doesn’t usually do it for me.”

“What-“ The Master tries to reply but coughs noisily instead.

“You were smiling.” Iicha tries and fails to add a teasing edge to her voice so the sentence comes out more like a threat.

“Nuh-uh-“

She raises her eyebrows. “Well, whatever it was, it must be peachy enough for you to ignore being choked to death.”

The Master rises shakily from the ground, ignoring the temptation to fall back down and lie in the dirt. There is now another layer of filth coating his clothes to worry about, another badly ruined shirt he desperately wants to dry-clean before dying in it.

“You could have just let them have me.” He offers, voice quiet and hoarse against the now tranquil backdrop of rustling leaves and twittering birds.

“What, and let you get mauled by the Village People? Nah, this shit’s way more personal. They don’t deserve you.” Iicha snorts.

“Thanks?” says The Master.

His captor checks a small device on her wrist and curses loudly, dragging him along after her as she begins to move again at a frightening pace.

Since he had last noticed the sky, a few storm clouds have gathered above them. The clouds are a bruised purple now and the small slivers of blue that emerge in the cracks between only serve to make the whole thing more like an overly complicated stained-glass window.

“I want you dead, obviously. You’re a fucking savage,” A beat. “But the Cyber thing you ate or absorbed or whatever needs to be in the right place before I can end your sad little life.

Two ideas collide wonderfully together at the same time in the Master’s head and he gasps aloud. Iicha turns.

“What?”

Stupid Master. Stupid. “You _can’t_ kill me.”

“Yeah.” Says his jailor. “I can.”

“You can’t kill me for killing your parents because you’re under orders.” Iicha flinches. “Ohhh, this is fantastic.” He grins, the slight strain of it stinging his cheeks. “Whoever ordered you to capture me doesn’t care if I die, they just need me in the right place at the right time to extract the Cyberium.”

He can just make out the flash of vulnerability that crosses Iicha’s face.

The Master continues.

“They need me alive long enough to transfer it over from my brain. But all that power, all that knowledge needs to be captured, distilled-“ He stops to take a deep breath of the forest air, letting Iicha stew quietly in front of him. “That technology’s only available in one place, in one tiny cluster of stars. The only person who could have any hope of accessing that sort of tech is the King- your Stepdad.”

Iicha’s eyes flit to the side, trying desperately to find a tree to settle on instead of him.

“But which galaxy, which planet… A king with so much information, technology, specifically for execution and extraction.” The Master scrambles towards the answer, there must be something in his brain that remembers. “Which means… It means..” His brain finally catches up with his mouth. “Oh.”

The storm clouds above are jostling now, their bruised purple now an angry black. He should have recognised the colour of the sky, the twining of the trees, the salt carried by the breeze picked up on the surface of boundless blue lakes.

“Your Stepdad. Is the King of Carnathon.”

In the time it takes him to get the words out, Iicha’s gaze has hardened, her head turned away in what The Master had thought was shame. “I thought you’d come easy enough, guess I was wrong.”

“I can’t be here, Iicha.”

Thunder rumbles nearby, the black of the clouds casting her brown eyes in an even deeper gloom.

He doesn’t see much after that. There is a sound like a gun going off and then the world splits into millions of tiny kaleidoscope pieces, waltzing around his vision until they morph into the same black as the sky.

The Master isn’t conscious when he enters the city nor when Iicha hands him over to the courtroom guards. He isn’t conscious when they lock him up or chain him to the cage. His eyes are shut when he is read his sentence and when the court pleads guilty on his behalf. The Master is back to the planet of his death for a second time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, I’ve lightly borrowed from a scene in another show. Ten points if you can tell me what it is. 😊 
> 
> Sleep well. x


	14. fourteen: final resting place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trial- from the Master's perspective. Dirt, oil and pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another chapter where that T rating really comes in handy!
> 
> I'm so sorry about the wait, I genuinely didn't think it would take this long.

**Chapter 11, a different perspective.**

**Underneath the Justice Courts, Carnathon.**

Focus on her. Focus on the sound of her voice, the look of her eyes. Make the connection, across the gulf of empty space, find her.

_Doctor!_

He cries, pushing away the searing pain still burning through his body. The cage is familiar, a slightly different design from the one he had used to restrain the Doctor on Gallifrey. Harsher, tighter than hers and with no way out.

He can’t think about that right now.

There is nothing left to think about but the sound of her voice; on Carnathon there will never be anything else. It’s ironic, he calls himself the Master when in reality all he has ever done is submit to her- and he will do it a million times. Because she is, always will be more than him.

Oh, how that hurts.

_Master!_

The weight of her crashes against him and he feels the walls around his mind shatter. Pieces of consciousness begin to splinter, allowing the Cyberium to seep in through the gaps. The parasite seeps in, mixing with his own thoughts and cutting into them. His gut churns with it all, spinning as if he is on a plane descending. The insistence of his Azbantium chains just about prevents him from vomiting.

The parasite had lurked, silent, only to return at his weakest. Now, it ravages what is left of his body. Every part is thinning, weakening, even the cells in his brain seem to be dying now. Through the last remnants of thought available to him, he registers the pain, tries to keep the link open.

In the frenzy of it all, he thinks of everything he should do, ought to do before the end. There are ceremonies on Gallifrey for this, last rites of sorts. In the final hours, the prayers of a Time Lord would echo through the citadel. Even the most secular of its inhabitants could be reduced to a final plea to a lost deity, a mother God.

The Master is dying.

So, he prays.

_Help me! Please help me. It hurts! Doctor, please!_

The response is almost instantaneous, coming like a tsunami and he is almost blown away with the force of it.

_Where are you?_ She asks, voice now so soft that it hurts to hear it. The weight of her words in his head makes forming anything coherent in response impossible.

He tries to answer, the sensation in his gut does not subside, sending a fresh spike of pain into the very core of him. The Master howls and whimpers, clutching whatever he can through his chains to try and ease the pain.

_It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts-_ He cries.

The cry does nothing, the pain stays, the spike morphing into a dull, dying ache in the very bottom of his spine.

_I need you to focus. Do you know where you are?_

The Master shuts his eyes, trying to stretch the link further to let her see his prison. There is little past the confines of the cage that isn’t blurred from view by the enclosure. There are sounds there, muffled, quiet sounds that distort once they pass the threshold but nothing in focus.

_It’s too dark._ He chokes. _I can’t think, I don’t know. I don’t know where I am, Doctor, please!_

The link flares. Somewhere in the miles of space between them, it strains and tears, releasing a fresh wave of pain through their bond. The Master sags for a moment, feeling briefly alive before the break patches back up again.

_Listen to me. I’m going to get you out of there. Are you safe?_ The Doctor asks.

_Safe?_

Not safe. Never safe. Not here. He doubts there is much she could do to intervene, even if she wanted to. Not like the last execution on Carnathon.

_Yes. Are you somewhere no one can hurt you?_

Hurt. Yes. Who is hurting him? What is hurting him? It isn’t Iicha nor the executioners of the court. So, the pain inside him is coming from him.

He reels back on reflex. The connection strains.

_Master._ She tries, voice glitching. He doesn’t reply.

_Are you there?_ His God whispers.

The link has thinned so much that he hears the strands of thought in her head blank out completely, transforming into meaningless hums.

_Won’t help me. Too weak. Stupid Master, stupid, stupid, stupid._ He babbles to himself.

The connection tears then, cutting him off and once more the small walls of the cage are just that- cold, jarring, _painful_.

She isn’t coming then.

The Master doesn’t know how long it is that he waits after that, left only with the blurred prison walls and the insistent, cruel pain that wracks him.

From the small area of his vision not tinted with silver, he can see the walls of his enclosure. The cage is lined with what looks like an aluminium film, effective on Carnathon because of the planet’s magnetic qualities. In his half-dead hysteria, the Master would guess that this exact containment pod had been exported from Earth. Twenty-third century.

Despite the aluminium, the cage is transparent. Every colour and light beams through its walls, amplifying the pounding in his head. The two court staff nearest to him are talking in hushed whispers, leant in close together in a shoddy attempt not to be heard. The noise of it pierces straight through him. Talk of the ruler’s new daughter or the state of the weather… Each harsh consonant finds a new way to drill itself into his head.

The Master squints at the hands of the guards, standing so close it is claustrophobic to look. He notices how they shine in the dark. Each nail is clean and filed. The hands themselves look idle, like they have never done a day’s work in their lives.

He looks down. His own nails are chipped, _more than_ chipped, they are filthy from tip to wrist. Everything attached to him seems to have its own air of grime, a combination of earthy muds, soils and a distinct smell of engine oil from Iicha’s shuttle. It is the smell of a horrible, slow decline.

Every cell in his body is minutes away from death now, he can feel them fizzling out and dissolving as he takes his breaths. It is not a new sensation, the Master has died before but never like this, never so scarred. He asks himself the question again.

_Am I afraid to die?_

There is no time to answer. No time or voice to protest when the guards in front of his cell stand to attention.

One of the women he had heard earlier takes the large lever beside his cell and wrenches it from it’s position on the wall. The cage electrifies, white rings like those on the paralysis field spring up around him and bind him frozen in the air. The oxygen he breathes seems to buzz as it enters his lungs, electrifying the dead pathways in his lungs.

The guards sneak glances at his trembling form.

“Murderer.” They mutter under their breath. He winces.

“You are going up.” Says the machine robotically.

A mechanism below the floor whirs, after that it takes a few seconds for the cage to start moving. The walls seem to sink downwards, revealing a white so powerful it makes him hurt. There’s a court around him, docks full of the blurred heads of spectators. To his right there is only white, bright light peppered with tall lines where he knows people must be standing.

As his enclosure rises, the Azbantium chains around him clink, their sound filling the space. It is a sacred quiet where his chains are the church bells and they sound so _loud_.

Inside his mouth he can taste the vague trace of silver where the Cyberium sits in his brain. It will be extracted at the moment of his death, or a split second before it as he is led to believe. Iicha would have wanted to see this, but he knows, somewhat instinctively that she will already be gone.

The cages comes to a stop, the courtroom around him now at eye-level.

It is clear that the crowd is here to watch him, that the verdict has already been decided and there is no defence left to give.

“You have been found guilty.” A man’s voice speaks from the side of him. The air in the room is fizzling, not only from the electricity but the anticipation of the onlookers. “Under Carnathion Law,” the voice drones, **“** You are sentenced to death.”

The Master swallows, trembling in the tepid air. His chains rattle.

Is he afraid to die?

Truly, when it comes down to it, is he scared?

The sound of an engine begins to rumble from beside his cage though it sounds more like the ticking of a clock. It is the machine that will kill him.

“Any last words?” Sneers the executioner he knows to be Iicha’s father, wielding a blurred object he thinks is a sceptre. When there is no reply, the King chuckles softly and grasps its handle.

The Master looks up, raising his eyes in prayer as he searches the faces of the crowd, looking for any sort of salvation in a familiar face or old enemy though nearly all he can see are blurred and distant. But-

There.

He stops, hearts skipping. There is one face, perfectly in focus. Gaze as wide and as kind as the day they had first met.

Their eyes meet. It’s her. The Doctor is here. She _sees_.

And he has never known longing like this. The relief of it flooding his body so spectacularly that in that instance he forgets to breathe. He doesn’t suppose it matters.

Seeing her, looking up at her like this, the halo of her hair lying in straggly curls around her head. If he is hallucinating, his mind is making an angel to sing him to sleep.

He decides that he will look at her as he goes, cling onto whatever is left in her eyes that responds to him. From inside the cage in the middle of the courtroom, The Master thinks. As his cells die, he can form only one coherent thought. He forms it, the pain of the stretch killing him faster. He manifests the words, imagines them meeting her ears. His mouth moves as he looks into her eyes, lips caressing the words like a dying man’s breath as they fall from him.

The Doctor’s lips part and he knows that she has heard him.

The King is holding his staff high, showing it off to the court around him. Ahead of him, a mechanism begins to whir, silver clockwork speeding and turning as electrifies.

As the current picks up, he keeps his eyes on her where she sits in the dock. There is so much still to say. He owes himself one last thought.

For the first time in his lives, The Master answers his own question.

He is afraid.

The staff hits the floor.

Then, several things happen at once.

The Master feels something hit the side of his body, plunging it to the ground inside the cage. In the dizziness of the fall, the courtroom spins. People move in slow-motion, the colours in their clothes dragging across his vision like tiny lens flares.

Somebody appears beside him, body electrified in the light of the clockwork. The figure darts forward and takes hold of his arm, pressing something cold into his wrist. The Azbantium chains fall to the ground, crashing noisily into the courtroom as the cage that is holding him evaporates.

From somewhere nearby, his executioner roars, staff crashing to the ground. It is the last thing he hears before the room is gone and instead of white, there is the blur of grey, green and drab brown.

The Master doesn’t know how but he is travelling, his body moving through the air at breakneck speed. There should be a breeze, though he supposes there is not much of him left to process it if there was. Something or someone is clutching tightly to him though he does not process the hurt from that either.

The ‘somebody’ clutching him sprints for a long time before stopping, seeming to lose their grip a little whilst fiddling with something in front of them. Whatever the thing is, it makes a clicking sound and suddenly they are moving again, forward. Slowly this time.

After only a few steps, The Master closes his eyes. The light has dimmed now and the air is warm. It feels like second death. He has died before, many times, just as painfully as this. Those times, the light had faded and he’d felt the clammy grip of warmth take him- just over into the darkness.

This must be the last moment he has- this _is_ death then, finally.

But death doesn’t caress, death does not touch or feel. This feeling is new, this feeling is light and it rocks him, gently, to his sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haHa motherfuckers!! I finally, finally finished the bulk of the angst so now whatever I write when I move out to University can be whatever I want it to be (probably mostly comfort fluff). Ahhh.... I'm so happy.


	15. fifteen: i love the bones of you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A recovery of sorts, the Master and the Doctor reunited and the promise of soup... If he can eat it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Christ on a bike that was a quick turn around. I thought I deserved to suffer so I've been writing non stop for the past two days before I go on holiday. I think this chapter might be my favourite so far, tell me what you think.
> 
> Warning! Contains tooth rotting fluff.
> 
> (Edit notes: sorry! Had to repost this because it wasn’t showing up on the tag for some reason)

51 days remaining

It had taken the Doctor a considerable amount of time to loosen the handcuffs, from the moment he had put them on her she had worked at the mechanism to get it as open as possible. It had been extremely lucky that the rich couple next to them had worn titanium-alloy bracelets, the same sort needed to cut through her cuffs and the cage holding the Master. What happened next had been a haze. She had run- that much was certain- and now here they both were. Safe. Ish.

She couldn’t cut it that fine. Ever again.

The Master’s TARDIS had worked a treat at first, materialising from Carnathon at a speed she had never seen before from her own ship. She knew how to work most of the controls for take off but once in the air, The Doctor began to hesitate, her hands stumbling over themselves in a bid to find the right switch or button.

Her Master was still slumped against the doors. From the speed she was whirling around the console, she couldn’t see the movement of his chest. It was a problem to worry about later, for now they needed a swift exit.

Just before the death sentence could be carried out, she had seen his cage flicker. Usually, flickering lights meant a lot of energy was being directed elsewhere, and in this case there was only one explanation of where it was going.

The Cyberium had only taken a split second to exit it’s host, but the flash of light that accompanied it had been obvious. The Master might be free of the parasite now but the Cyberium had sure-as-anything transferred to a different host, right in front of her eyes. Somebody inside the courtroom was now in possession of one of the most powerful info-matrixes in the Universe.

The Doctor materialises the ship in neutral space- and with a flourish of important-looking buttons, cloaks it. Then, for the second time in just under two weeks, she carries the Master through the corridors of the TARDIS to the Med Room.

She doesn’t know what she should have expected, but the room she arrives in is empty. The only furniture inside is a medical-grade stretcher with a pair of metal handcuffs attached to the rail.

“Ah.”

The Doctor takes one look at the bed, turns on her heels and walks out the door.

After a few of the ship’s supposed medical rooms turn out to be empty, she takes a different approach and stops at the closest, most comfortable looking room. Once inside, she walks towards the bed and lays the Master’s body gently down on the soft sheets. He sinks into them, body already so limp that it seems to deflate on impact.

She needs to examine him as soon as possible, with no medical supplies and only her sonic to help. He had seemed close to death in the courtroom. She wonders how close. Did he want to, in the end?

It is eerie how still the Master is. She’s never known them not to fidget in some way. Even just standing still, her friend had always seemed to buzz with an infinite amount of energy. When they’d stayed together on the TARDIS, Missy had filled every room. There was nowhere you could look to forget her presence.

Now, it’s hard to see anything in him but pain.

The Doctor slings her jacket over a nearby chair and rolls her sleeves to her elbows. There are things she needs to do now that Yaz had taught her, odd bits of police training that cropped up whenever the Doctor was being clueless and couldn’t remember whether human’s hearts were in their chest or their legs.

‘First thing you do,’ Yaz had said, ‘Check for _danger_. Is the casualty safe?’

Firstly, she removes the tracker from his neck. The sonic is quiet as it works, humming respectfully against his skin. Whatever magic Ohila had bound to the both of them, it is dissolving. The Sisterhood must know that she’s broken it, but that’s a problem for another time.

The Doctor closes her eyes. Just from probing his shields, she can tell the Cyberium has vanished. Where it had been, however, there is a trail of destruction, memories and emotions shattered in pieces across his mind.

So, no imminent danger, but plenty of damage to clear up.

‘Then, check to see if the casualty is responding.’

She tries tickling his neck. The Master’s nose scrunches slightly in response.

‘Next, check that the airway is open and clear.’

His chest _is_ rising regularly now, still weak but just about there. The Doctor doesn’t want to be more invasive than she has to and it’s more than likely his respiratory bypass will kick in if needs be so she doesn’t pry further.

Yaz’s instructions stop being helpful after that, Time Lord physiology being so different to a human’s. She needs to work out how to do this by herself, _without_ the usual clumsiness that seems to accompany everything in this body.

“Now Doctor.” She tells herself, “Maximum effort.”

It’s a trial to work her way through his clothes without waking him. The shirt and remnants of a waistcoat he has left are singed, torn and dirtied in every way possible. The Doctor sets herself a mental reminder to find him a new set, there must be some clothes in the wardrobe he’d liked on his last visit- No. Don’t think about that.

There must be damage to his legs but she doesn’t want to undress him, not without his consent first. For now, her focus will be on his upper body and the dark bruising painting his neck.

She pulls his shirt open and has to stop a whimper. His chest is bloodied, unimaginably worse than the last time she saw it. Each wound looks agonising and too deep to be real, she has seen walking corpses looking healthier. Her bandages from last time had either detached themselves or been manually removed, the only evidence of her work that remains is a small sticking plaster on his lower abdomen. Even with constant medical care, no amount of dressing is going to heal them. He will regenerate in a matter of months unless-

If she really is what he says she is, The Timeless Child, then she can keep giving. She can give as much as she wants to him. Forever, if he needs it. The artron energy will knit him back together quickly without her having to worry about internal damage.

The Doctor shuffles round the bed so she is sitting beside him, legs folded under her as she leans across him. She tries it with her hands first, summoning up the energy from inside her until they glow gold in the dim bedroom light. After only a few seconds, however, the light extinguishes and retreats back through her fingertips. The energy is still there, welling up like a spring inside her, but the glow has gone.

Right, okay. Fantastic. Not playing nice then. She’s going to need a faster way to channel the energy, a part of her body close to her chest that she can control easily. Preferably something that isn’t too embarrassing like an armpit or… Ah.

The Doctor leans down, tossing the stray hairs from her face, and kisses him.

She presses her lips to the first scar, a glaring, angry cut on his collarbone, and commands her body to heal him. Then, she pulls away and watches as each tiny strand of gold weaves itself into his skin. The cut vanishes. The Doctor smiles.

After the first, she keeps going, sending a stream of golden energy through each of her kisses. One by one the wounds seal into unbroken skin, leaving an expanse of beautiful soft brown. His body is lapping up the energy as soon as it leaves her, so desperate to be healed even if he is too stubborn to do it himself. It’s incredible how fast she feels energised again, somehow not losing pace despite the sheer quantity of artron.

She moves onto his chest, after a few minutes, where the worst of his injuries lie. The large whip mark is still raw and it makes her stomach turn with guilt. She starts by knitting the flesh back together, trailing a line of kisses from top to tail. The regeneration energy fizzles around the wound when she pulls away, slowly patching over the ugly scar that remains.

Once the Doctor has finished on his torso, she pulls away. The Master shifts slightly in his sleep, his lips parting as he takes in the air.

As well as the damage to his upper body, there are cuts on his wrists too. Ones she has to talk to him about later now that the immediate danger has subsided.

She moves up to hover above his face and brushes a loose strand of hair from his eyes. It’s long, nice. A little shorter than her own but wilder, strands shaped into messy waves that just edge past the tips of his ears. Since their meeting on Gallifrey, the Master seems to have held a permanent tension in his face. She can see it weighing on his eyes even as he sleeps. Even though they are both in younger bodies this time around, age seems to radiate from them in a way it had never done before. There is a sense of finality to everything their bodies do, like this is already the end of the story.

He looks a kind of beautiful she has never seen in him before. Everything about him etched into different features, all of their shared history held in the quirk of an eyebrow. She wonders how much she hasn’t seen of him yet, things about this body that are so different from last time.

The Doctor decides in that moment, she’s going to do something stupid.

She edges closer and traces the newly healed skin on his neck with her finger. If she’s counted right- it is always difficult to know with the Master- he has eight regenerations left. Enough to last, if he’s very careful, a few thousand years.

The Doctor has the power to give him more, as many as will last _a million_ years, if they want. _Start with one_ , she thinks, test the limits of her own body before going all the way. She moves her face over his and holds herself above him like that, a few centimetres away. _Just enough energy for one more turn._

The Doctor leans in and presses her lips to his. He is soft against her, his own lips parting subconsciously so they fit together perfectly. It’s warm. So warm and familiar and comfortable that she almost forgets to summon the energy and gives in to kissing him. No, _no_. Not kissing. This is practical. Just practical, that’s all.

When the rest of the energy disappears inside him, she pulls away, eyes still lingering, lips close enough to touch.

Beneath her, his eyelashes flutter and slowly, like he is waking for the first time in his life, the Master opens his eyes.

The Doctor starts and tears herself away from him, scrambling awkwardly off the bed and tripping backwards into the wall.

“Morning!” She shrieks, face now more like the colour of a beetroot than a person.

The Master groans, eyes half-open, and exhales tiredly into the warm air of the room. A tiny strand of gold radiates from him but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Doctor.” He says, voice so small she almost doesn’t hear it.

“Mm?”

“Come back. Please.”

The air in the room suddenly becomes soft against her skin. At the same time, she can feel her hearts melting like butter inside her chest. “Okay.” She whispers.

The Doctor shifts her weight onto her feet then hesitates, watching quietly as his chest rises steadily. She stands there for a minute before edging closer and perching lightly on the edge where the sheets spill elegantly over onto the floor. When the Master’s eyes close slightly in disappointment, a pang of guilt shoots through her and she moves further in.

The Doctor swings her legs up onto the left-hand side of the bed and manoeuvres herself so that her elbows rest either side of his head. Close enough to feel the heat radiating from him but still too far away to be thought about as anything _intimate_.

Below her, the Master’s eyes droop shut again and he hums contentedly- or perhaps he is just too tired to deal with her. It’s such a stark contrast to the pain and grief of the past two weeks that a small chill runs through her.

“I was so scared.” She whispers softly. “You were hurting so much and I didn’t know how to help you. I thought-“

The Doctor stops mid-sentence. What had she thought? That she had to punish him? Keep him? There was something about her own emotions that was troubling, incomprehensible and too great to properly put into words.

Beneath her, his eyes fly open, they are clear and so, so sad.

“You kept me.” The Master says.

She swallows and opens her mouth slightly to protest. “I tried to help you. I didn’t want you to get hurt, I didn’t know-“

“No. You ignored me.” He frowns, lines of tension suddenly appearing around his eyes. “I’m not an experiment, Doctor.”

“You’re not that, you’re my friend. You were never just a project. We’re equals.”

“Then why did you say we weren’t?”

Her breath catches, memories of Gallifrey swarm back. The shock of it is still so fresh. He had been right, then, she had been broken, but not by him.

_‘I contain multitudes more than I ever thought or knew. I am so much more than you.’_

The Doctor whimpers. There had never been a second thought, she had been so focused on coming out on top. He wasn’t supposed to have taken it seriously, he was the Master- never dying, never feeling, always her opposite, always there for her to thwart.

Oh God.

A cry tears itself from her throat. She clamps a hand over her mouth, muffling the noises that spill from her. “I didn’t mean- I-“

“Why did you say that to me Doctor.”

She lowers her head in shame, tears running helplessly down her cheeks. Why? When she had already lost so much? “I’m sorry.”

“I hurt so much. I don’t want to be awake to feel that hurt whenever I look at you.” The Master meets her crying eyes, mouth crooked with disdain. “I exist to feel _shit_ because of you.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” She sobs, eyes screwed so tightly now that the tears are more like a river than a rainstorm. The knot in her throat feels so sore, so tight that it is suffocating. She drops down, her sodden cheek leant on his chest, tears cascading.

A hand touches the back of her head and strokes. The Doctor chokes, burrowing her face into the crook of his neck. Her fist is clenched tightly by the side of his head, blunt nails digging in so far they make tiny white crescents.

“It’s okay.” He whispers to her.

“No.” She cries, voice breaking. “It’s not okay, I’m so stupid. I’m worthless.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.” He repeats, over and over as she sobs. There’s a hand burrowed in her hair, taking each strand and curling it gently.

They stay like that for a long time, The Master holding her close, warming her as she whines and screams in frustration. After a few minutes, the cries get quieter, her throat aching from the strain of it all. Eventually, his hand stops moving and they revert back to just being still, basking in the warmth of one another. The movement of his chest lifts her shaking form up and down like he is the tide and she, a tiny shell moving on the water. For a while she stays, breathing the familiar scent of him and drinking in how it drowns every inch of the room. The Doctor remains until, realising rather belatedly that she is lying against his bare skin, she jolts upright.

He looks at her, eyes calm, lips parted slightly, and breathes.

She tears her gaze away, quickly blinking away tears. “You need to eat.”

The Master hums. Whatever it means, she doesn’t inquire.

The Doctor untangles herself from him and hurriedly clambers off the bed. Neither of them say anything as she leaves.

The kitchen proves to be remarkably easy to find, only a few doors down the corridor from the bedroom. She prays there is something in there that isn’t a complicated brandy or a poison bottle. This TARDIS is unfamiliar and worse, it doesn’t trust her, even to care for it’s pilot.

After a few minutes of rummaging in unreasonably messy cupboards, a can of soup falls from the shelves and onto the counter in front of her. It’s vegetable flavour, though the label doesn’t specify which type of vegetable or even which planet it is from. She digs out a soup spoon and a bowl to pour it into before heating it under the insta-cooker.

When she returns with the soup, The Master is sitting upright on the bed with his bloodied shirt still hanging open. If he has noticed the absence of scars on his chest, he shows no signs of being horrified or disgusted like she’d suspected. She pulls up the chair and shuffles awkwardly round, arranging it so the sheets fall loosely down the chair-legs and pile on the floor.

“Here.” The Doctor says softly, offering him the bowl, holding it carefully so none of the liquid spills over the side

He breathes in sharply and tries to raise his hand, managing to lift it a few centimetres from the sheets before it comes crashing back down. The Master sighs. “I can’t”

The Doctor picks up the spoon and dips it into the soup. The liquid pools, warm strands of steam rising from it.

“Say ‘Ah’.”

He looks unimpressed but opens his mouth nonetheless and lets her feed him.

The bowl is half empty when the Master finally refuses to eat any more, leaving her a little dismayed at not being able to spoon feed him any longer. To be honest, she’s surprised he’s got this far.

The Doctor sets the bowl down on the bedside table and shuffles the chair closer to him. From this distance, she can see where some of the wounds used to be. Bruising is hard to heal, even with regeneration energy.

They’re close now. The Master takes the opportunity to leans towards her, squinting at something just below her eyes. It’s a little disconcerting to be so close.

“You have soup on your nose.”

Before she can react, his fingers are underneath her chin, tilting her face upwards. The Doctor raises an eyebrow.

“What-“ She starts but can’t bring herself to move away. The Master leans in and kisses her nose, wiping the soup away with his bottom lip.

“Mmm.” He hums, licking at it with the tip of his tongue. She feels her cheeks redden.

He lets out something that sounds vaguely like a chuckle, still only about an inch away.

“You smell like vegetable.” She blurts. It’s not entirely accurate. He also smells like smoke and home and warmth. The scent of him is deep, intimate, the realest thing the Doctor has ever smelt.

She sniffs the air. The Master closes his eyes and blows out a breath of cool air, she feels it brush against her face.

The space inside the room feels smaller somewhat, like there is nothing outside, no console room, no corridors, no universe. Silken sheets rub gently against the balls of her feet, tickling like the breath that they share with each other.

The Doctor is about to speak, to pull away from him, when the air inside the room changes. Instead of the gentle warm touch of earlier, it fizzles, electric charges prickling around her. He’s sensed it too by the looks of it, pupils dilating, the black of them mixing with already dark brown. She hadn’t noticed before, how very long his eyelashes are as they touch against his cheek.

“Doctor.” He says.

“Yeah?” She breathes,

“You’ve got soup-“

The Doctor’s face drops, panic suddenly overtaking her. She hadn’t been that messy, surely?

“Where?”

The Master smiles.

“Let me show you.”

She frowns, mouth opening in confusion and then- in a split second- his lips are on hers and she, robbed of air, of light, of everything but him, kisses back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh


	16. sixteen: explosives have nothing on us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It really was gonna go either way whether I published this today or tomorrow but I'm glad I soldiered through. You'll notice the number of chapters at the top is set at '26', yes, I have finally decided where I need to go and where I need to end. Hopefully you'll like it as much as I do.
> 
> The next updates, I don't know when they'll be. By the time you see me next I will be in a different city, starting up Uni with a whole different life so Who Knows? Maybe I will need something to write.

47 days remaining

The Doctor brings him soup every day after that. She doesn’t want to call it a peace offering but each time, she stays a little longer. He doesn’t say anything but sometimes she thinks she sees a sliver of smile on his face.

One day, things go tremendously and the next- she can’t tell. Emotions are so difficult to read. The Master’s, even more so.

The first day is difficult. Getting her patient to drink even the smallest cup of water is an uphill struggle. Much of their conversation is ‘yes’ and ‘no’ or ‘please just tell me where it hurts so I can help you’. The Doctor doesn’t sleep.

The second day passes much like the first. Talk is minimal and getting anything past his lips is her toughest challenge. Afterwards, she finds him some new clothes from the wardrobe. Maybe her TARDIS can fix his old ones, but for now he will have to settle for the mainly black garbs his previous self had stashed away. The ship hums beneath her feet as she works.

On the third day, he manages a few steps before collapsing. They talk about nothing in particular. It is a calm day in the vortex and- so far- the TARDIS has remained undetected. Linear time passes slowly. The Master’s legs remain covered in wounds. His upper body, however, is clean and smooth, neither of them wanting to be the first to mention it.

It is the fourth day that the storm breaks. The Doctor has brought her customary offering of a small bowl of soup and a few bandages to properly cover the wounds he will allow her to tend to. She has something else too, something she wants him to see.

“Tell me if I’m hurting you.”

She rips off a plaster, revealing bare flesh underneath. The Master takes a sharp breath in but stays silent. The Doctor huffs and reaches for the small vial of cleanser, first tipping it over a small cloth before dabbing at the offending wound.

It must sting but he makes no sound, only the occasional gasp or slight clench of muscle.

When she is done, she sets the vial back down again and reapplies the plasters. The only kind on the Master’s TARDIS had been Venusian Bandaid-like things from a black market. They had needed sterilising and sonicking before she had let them get anywhere near him.

When everything has been treated and dressed, the Doctor pulls away and lets him rest for a moment. The strain of sitting upright has obviously taken a lot of energy.

After a few minutes of quiet, the Master opens his eyes and blinks.

“You left your glasses on the tray” He says, head cocked.

The Doctor pauses. “Those… aren’t mine.” Under his stare, a feeling of guilt begins to ebb away at her gut. “They’re yours. If you want them.”

The expression on his face is unreadable. When there isn’t a response, she carries on. “I had the TARDIS scan you. The Cyberium must have locked onto your occipital lobe because it’s damaged like I’ve never seen. That’s why you wanted me close to you, your vision can’t be better than a few feet. Hence, glasses.”

The Doctor picks up the glasses from the tray and offers them to him.

A shadow flashes behind the Master’s eyes. He shuffles awkwardly under the bedsheets.

“I don’t need them.”

She sighs, placing the glasses on top of the bedcovers where he can reach them. “You can’t even properly see my face right now. Just try them. Please.”

He hesitates, face tense with reluctance. It is a surprise to both of them when he picks up the frames, slowly flexing his arm before taking the spectacles by the handles, moving them shakily up to sit around his ears and sliding them on.

The Doctor feels an unusual heat in her cheeks at the sight, perhaps a side effect of the soup. She coughs quietly, watching as he drops the frames down to sit on the end of his nose. Behind the lenses, the Master’s eyes look unimaginably wider.

“How far can you see?” She asks. He opens his eyes, looking a little like a startled owl, and reads from an engraving on the inside of the door.

“ _Tell that its sculptor well those passions read, which yet survive, stamped on those lifeless things._ ”

“They suit you.” The Doctor smiles, trying desperately not to think about how nice his reading voice is. She recognises the poem from not so long ago. Shelley. “Your mental shields should heal up quickly but I can’t do much about your eyesight. The scars on your legs are pretty bad so I wouldn’t try to walk anymore if I were you.”

She smiles again but there is something sudden and dark in the Master’s eyes when he looks back. They share an emotion. Some sort of knowing, begrudging gloom. There’s resentment there too, mostly his.

“There’s some more pairs in the console room, I just thought…”She trails off, remembering the touch of her hand against his chest and watching the skin heal under it. It feels uncomfortable, wrong almost to think about it with him awake like this.

The Master knows. He must know, but the words she expects don’t come.

“You scanned me without asking.”

“What, no I-“ The Doctor starts, stuttering to a halt as she realises how quickly she had stumbled into a lie.

“I didn’t ask you to take care of me.” He growls, teeth bared a little in the dim bedroom light.

“You were dying.” She sighs and turns to pick up the small bowl of soup, still steaming, on the counter. The Master flinches away when she offers it to him.

“And?” He says pointedly. A sting of cold shoots through her hearts.

Just as she is about to answer, the Master’s head jolts away, eyes fixing predatorially on something beyond the foot of the bed. The Doctor turns.

There, sitting silently in the doorway is the outline of a black cat, one she had so stupidly forgotten.

Shadow licks her paw, tail curling as it falls out into the open corridor. The stream of light from outside casts the cat’s already dark fur an ever darker black.

“I thought we were on your TARDIS.” He breathes. Shadow purrs innocently.

“Never said that.” She mutters.

They watch the cat for a few more seconds before it quirks it’s ear in their direction and turns to stalk out of the door. The Master stares at the empty space.

“Doctor. How did we get here?”

“On Avaxus, you were gone. Trakenite you, he took me and Laika-“

The Master jolts under her.

“Laika?” He whispers. The Doctor takes a deep breath and remembers the auction house.

“She was sold. I couldn’t move. I know we have to get her back but please, I don’t know where she is.”

“She was _scared_.” The Master spits. “All you had to do was _hold her_.”

The Doctor puts down the soup bowl down and tries to shuffle her chair closer to the bed. He recoils, hands scrambling frantically to hold himself up.

“You were responsible for her, responsible for me, responsible for the girl. You lost all of us and now you’re pretending to babysit me?”

His accusation makes her head spin. Of course she is responsible for his welfare, of course she is the one to tend to his wounds each time he acquires them.

“Since it always falls to me to _keep you safe_ , yes.”

He reels back and for a moment she thinks he might spit at her. It’s the wrong answer, like everything she says to him.

“Fuck you.” He scowls.

The Doctor lets out a frustrated sigh and screws up her eyes as tight as she can. “What am I doing wrong? What do I need to do?”

The Master scowls at her and begins to shuffle under the covers. Before she realises what he is doing or even move to stop him, he is up and out the other side of the bed.

“You wouldn’t listen to me if I told you.”

“You’re injured. Please just _stop_.”

“I’m going to do what I want.” He hisses

“It’s not safe, you’ll shake off the plasters. _Please_.”

“Stop stroking your ego. You don’t give a shit if I hurt myself. I destroyed them all, remember?”

The Master pulls himself across the room to the door and nudges it open with his foot. Shadow watches from the bed as he pulls himself into the corridor ahead of her. The Doctor doesn’t move to stop him, even as he groans with pain. Instead, she tries to follow his path down the hall, each step accompanied by a grunt of discomfort.

“How do I make this better?”

He grits his teeth to muffle a cry. “Just don’t fucking touch me, okay?”

“Okay.” She says softly, “I won’t.”

“Good.”

“Where are you trying to get to?” She asks.

A grimace. “Out.”

“I’ll open the doors. The controls are tricky but I’ll talk to the TARDIS.”

He grunts in acknowledgement and hauls himself round a particularly tricky corner. The Doctor spots a small trail of blood leaking from his leg. She doesn’t say anything.

“I’m _so_ grateful.” The Master sneers.

A few more steps.

“I’ll miss you.” She says. That slows him down, he stumbles for a step before regaining momentum.

“That’s unlikely. I’m just a blip, you’ll get over me.”

His words sting and she feels the familiar tug of emotion from her gut.

“That’s not true.” The Doctor replies, a little quieter. Her friend scoffs and begins to limp a little more urgently.

“You can find another pet. Just go to Earth and pick up some other mortal.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why? Because it’s the truth or because it puts a downer on your oh-so-perfect life?”

“No…” She says, voice breaking into slivers of a whisper.

He’s nearly at the door now, just metres away from the entrance to the console room.

“I don’t matter. Just go away. Let me go, okay. I don’t _matter_.”

It’s the final word that breaks the dam and suddenly she is on the floor, limbs crashing with a dull thud against the metal grating. The noise echoes. Ahead of her, the Master stops in his tracks, body heaving with each lurch of breath.

“Doctor?” He says, voice so small she almost doesn’t hear it.

The Doctor’s throat crackles as it closes up. Her entire body feels numb, like one big ball of pins and needles. Whatever wall had been there before has disintegrated, leaving a flood of hot tears to bead in her eyes and roll in tiny streams down her face.

“You matter so much.” She sobs. “Can’t you see? You’re the most important thing in the universe. You’re brilliant and you’re so much better than me.”

He doesn’t speak **,** mouth still gulping in greedy breaths.

“I don’t understand. You swore to be good, we were friends and now you hate me again and I don’t know what to do.” The words spill out, memories too. Missy’s gleaming eyes and trusting smile, so ready to change. She is sure the Master can see them.

The look of misery that crosses his face is enough to make a fresh wave of tears spring from her eyes. Is he remembering too?

“I just want my friend back. Please. Let me be the same as you.”

He winces, tiny lines appearing around his eyes. The glasses, her peace offering, are halfway down the corridor, lying on the floor. “Don’t say that. Please don’t say that. You don’t mean it.”

“I don’t even know who I am.” She wails. “You’ve always been so strong, so confident, so sure.”

The Master shuffles forwards a little and lets go of the wall, crashing against the floor beside her. It hurts, she can feel the hurt in the air between them burning like a wire exposed but he does not cry out.

“I’m not.” He says, a shaking hand reaching over to stroke the top of her head. “I’m not that.”

“You’re so beautiful and clever and I wish you knew-“

“Shhh…” The hand strokes, grasping gently at strands of her hair. Any protest from the Doctor’s lips dies in the air at the touch of him. It feels _nice_. Why is he being nice?

Over time, her body slumps into his and she feels the tension drain steadily from her limbs. Lying against his chest rocks her almost into the edge of sleep, he is heavy, curved like a crescent moon over her. The Doctor imagines it weighing her down, grounding her to the surface. She doesn’t move, the last eke of a tear drying as she returns to focus on the world around her.

There is a quiet hiss in the air, the engines whirring and shifting around them as they stand by. Everything smells of paraffin and the scent of a candle just extinguished, except his fingers, they are cinder toffee and the musk of burnt incense.

“Mm.” She hums when the stroking stops. The Master chuckles and then shushes her into silence again. She feels the stream of cool air on her forehead and the movement of the hand continues.

Maybe this is it, this is the moment they will spend together under the sun, just the two of them basking in a shallow peace until a storm breaks again. If so, she thinks she might die with him this time, peaceful in a haze of shared touch.

There is too much in her brain when he speaks, three syllables landing forever and ever, reverberating like song through the corridors

He whispers into her hair, the words he had mouthed in the courtroom. “ _Illchlamos_.” I love you.


	17. seventeen: the three sided coin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On a far away planet called Vulpana, the Doctor and the Master go on a date which is definitely not a date. Plans are hatched, cakes are eaten. After all this they should be communicating properly, right? Right???

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing essentially what is sick-fic whilst I am actually confined to my room, sick. Power move? Yeah.
> 
> If you couldn't tell, I am currently at University (IN CARDIFF!!!!) and my halls are basically the plague village. Ironically I haven't had COVID yet, but I do have weird Freshers Flu. If anyone wants any fics they want shoving under Chris Chibnall's door, let me know.

42 days remaining.

“Are you-“

“I’m fine.”

“Do you need-“

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure-“ She starts.

The Master turns from his position on the stairs and gives The Doctor a pointed look.

“Right. Yep. Fine. Got the message.”

Today, unlike the previous week of virtual house-arrest, they are attempting to leave the TARDIS. The destination is a small café on the outskirts of Vulpana run by incredibly tall wolves. Word around the universe is that the cheesecake is incredible; The Doctor knows neither of them have ever been and she’d been hoping to surprise him.

She watches as he limps slowly up the stairs. Somehow, his right leg has healed faster than his left, possibly due to her own interference. He has begun to eat more too and- to her secret disappointment- shaved, though his stubble still stubbornly peeks through.

The Master has dressed in an ensemble of purple and even lighter purple, a dressed down version of an Englishman’s coat and tails. She wants to give him a little cane to go with it but he’d probably use it to hit people with. His hair remains long and flicked at the ends. It’s endearing, though she’s never going to admit that.

“Love.” He calls sheepishly from the top of the stairs.

“Mm?”

“Door.”

The Doctor has to bite back a smirk as she strides past him, freeing the door to the console room with a small _flick_.

She’s chosen a less subdued outfit for the occasion, a remix of the usual rainbows the TARDIS had made for her. Her coat looks more like something out of a regency costume drama, high waisted with too many odd bits she doesn’t know what to do with.

Once the two of them have finished arguing over how to fly the ship, they set to work on the controls. It’s hard for the Master to properly move so she makes allowances for him, flipping the occasional lever when he isn’t looking.

After a few minutes, they land on the outskirts of Vulpana’s second city, a glorious, lush series of tall forests and gaping crevasses stretching out into the distance. In the midst of the forest and just outside the ship’s door is a paved town square consisting of vibrantly coloured buildings and in the corner, an oddly Parisian-looking café.

She waits behind for the Master to follow and together they walk across the square, hands almost touching in the air between them. On arrival at the café, a polite-looking Vulpanian flashes them a courteous smile and points towards reception.

The Doctor smiles back, waving her psychic paper absent-mindedly at the concierge who leads them through the dining room to the back of the building. On the way, a small wolf asks her quietly if any mobility assistance is required. She shakes her head sadly.

Eventually, they are shown to a balcony table; the view below is of a deep canyon, crashing waterfalls and lush green vines flow over the sides. The two of them almost miss the chairs, eyes so drowned with the scale of it all.

“Beautiful.” She says

“Alive.” He says simultaneously.

Her gaze flickers to him. Against the utopian landscape below, the Master should look small, dwarfed by enormity of it, but when she looks closer she can see a huge tapestry of timelines hanging like golden threads around him. Infinite like the boundless blue of the sky. The Doctor opens her mouth to ask him something but snaps her jaw shut at what she sees next.

In the corner of his eye, a tear glints, almost spilling onto the cheek below. There is such a mist of emotion there that she cannot even begin to understand.

She can’t bear to think about it but… He looks like O.

The Master turns suddenly, face trained into practiced neutrality.

“Afternoon tea.” He says, blinking hard.

“Afternoon tea.” She replies, smiling faintly.

They sit down. The Doctor takes off her jacket it and lays it over the back of her chair but he stays fully clothed. She notes how he pulls the arms of his jacket down so they cover his wrists.

“I came here once, ages ago, lovely girl named Mags.” She babbles, a little too loudly for the silence. “I say girl, more like a werewolf. Helped her escape the circus. One year, she invited me for the Vulpanian Equinox. Great ceremony- her family thought I was a sacrifice and tried to roast me on the barbeque! I’ve never been apologised to so many times.”

The Master presses his lips together and glances across at a waterfall.

“Came here once too.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I died.” He says solemnly, entrusting the air with a heavy sigh. The Doctor’s brain turns to jelly for a second at ‘died’, wobbling slightly before springing back into shape.

“Hence the ‘once’ then.” She jokes.

The Master snorts. “You’re not funny.”

She smiles in return, lips quirking at the edges.

There is a noise from beside them as the café door opens, a tiny bell twinkling lightly from the kitchen. A variation on afternoon tea appears quickly alongside two waitresses, china cups hanging from their tails. The speed in which they set the plates on the table is astronomical, the Doctor thinks they must have trained for years to do it. _Must remember to leave a tip._

Once the wolves have set everything down, she tucks in, crumbs cascading down her chin whilst the Master orders strawberry cheesecake. After a round of curtseying- bowing as well, to the Master, probably another gender thing she didn’t understand- the waitresses head back inside and they are left alone on the balcony.

He takes a small sip of tea, basking momentarily in the steam the liquid makes, and sets the cup back on the saucer. The air is still between them.

“Am I going to bring it up or are you?”

Crumbs spill onto the table. “What?” She mumbles through a mouthful of Vulpanian scone.

“Laika.” He says. The Doctor almost stops chewing. “We’re getting her back.”

There’s a serious sounding tone to the last sentence that sounds almost too good to be true. Too much like the promises Missy had made her not so long ago.

“You care?” She tries cautiously.

The Master looks at her, eyebrows furrowed. “ _You_ care.”

“Not an answer.”

A smirk.

“Didn’t know I was being interrogated, love.”

She catches herself leaning forwards, elbows almost halfway across the table. His eyes flicker to her posture and she realises belatedly how much she is slouching. As she straightens up, the Doctor notices a small bird sitting on top of the railing, head cocked as it stares into the distance. A magpie. No, an avietria. The birds that mate for life.

A thought plants itself uncomfortably inside her head.

“You should remember. You should remember some of this. Past you and now you didn’t even properly meet.”

The Master shakes his head. “Nothing. I can tell you from my TARDIS where I was in my timeline but I can’t remember. Not Laika.”

They look at each other.

“Which means past you is still after us. You have to meet.” She says slowly.

After a long pause, he looks away, eyes skimming over the curves of the railing. The Master swallows.

“I can’t do that again.”

For a second, she considers comforting him but then the memories return and the silhouette of Missy walking away _burns_ her again. Instead, she holds his gaze and purses her lips shut. At her silence, the Master’s eyes sink a little, somehow becoming impossibly darker in the afternoon light. One of O’s quirks, that. Big kind eyes turning to sad ones in the blink of an eye.

_I hope you know it hurt._

Her attention is torn away by the sound of a plate landing between them and the sight of a timid-looking waitress scuttling back to the kitchen. The Doctor snaps awake. On the plate is the most beautiful slice of cake she has ever seen, so perfect that it takes her a few blinks to realise it is real. Even the strawberry on top glistens ethereally.

The Master’s mouth falls open. She looks from her small pile of scones to his plate and feels something warm spring up in her gut. Devilish, unrestrained envy.

“The sign out the front did say ‘Share.” She tries.

He scoffs and pulls the plate towards him. “Not a chance.”

“I’ll pay?”

An eyebrow raise.

“That’s good. I have no money anyway.”

“You’re a terrible date.” She shoots back, stuffing in a third scone.

There’s a pause where the Doctor realises what she’s just said **.** Heat floods her face like kettle steam.

“Date?” The Master smirks.

“Did I say that?” She rambles “I don’t think I said that. You’re such a liar. Anyway, moving on-“

He rolls his eyes at her before returning his gaze to the cheesecake.

The Doctor scrambles to change the subject.

“I don’t know how we can find Laika. There are no traces of her DNA left to track. I don’t know where she was taken. An auction house. I don’t know.”

The Master slips a forkful of cake into his mouth, eyelashes fluttering. A world away from earlier.

“Mm.”

She drops her hands to her lap. “We’ve got nothing.”

He looks at her with hooded eyes and swallows, planting the cake fork delicately into the soft cream on top. She watches as it begins to sink.

“Not quite.”

The Doctor feels a flash of annoyance. “What do you mean, ‘not quite’?”

“I _mean_ that we still have a link. Telepathically.”

She almost does a double take. “You talked to her?”

Babies and the Master? Thinking about the two in the same sentence seems so desperately wrong. He hadn’t even tried to murder her either.

“Little humans are far more interesting than fully grown ones.” He grins, taking another bite from the cheesecake. The Doctor glares. “Besides, she started it.”

“So…”

“So we exploit it. As long as I’m close, I know where she is.”

He’s right.

“If we can use your psychic connection to Laika and interlink it with the controls on the TARDIS’ telepathic circuits-“ She starts.

“-create an intra spacial barrier across the vortex, linking up the two locations-“ He continues.

“-set the coordinates, fix the landing and-“

“Boom! Into time and space.” They shout, collapsing into childish giggles.

After a moment the Master frowns. “What does the ‘boom’ symbolise?”

“You crashing.”

He rolls his eyes and points his fork menacingly at her, flecks of the stupidly gorgeous strawberry cheesecake still clinging to it. She holds her hands up in surrender.

After that, both of them eat for a while and sit in contented silence, enjoying the plates of food in front of them as well as the view over the side. The sun has gone down a little bit but the sky is no less blue. Birds still swoop in circles across the canyons, crystal water glancing off their wings. Idyllic.

Halfway through the Vulpanese slices, a smudge of icing lands on her chin. The Doctor grunts in annoyance and scrambles to find a fork, finding all the available cutlery on the other side of the table. She makes a noise and prods at his mental shields. _Cake._

_Yes. It’s spectacular, isn’t it._

She rolls her eyes.

“Just put it in my mouth, okay?” She manages through a mouthful of crumbs.

He wiggles his eyebrows.

“Maybe later, love.”

Her face goes a beetroot shade of red and she slaps him on the arm.

“Ow.”

“You’re going to have to work hard to beat this. I know I’ve won, just admit it.”

The Master turns up his nose at her. “There are billions of cafes in the Universe, many of which serve even more delicious cake than this. I think you’re secretly scared of my café-picking prowess.”

This time, her eyes roll of their own accord.

“Go on then. Top me.”

“Like I said, maybe later.”

“You’re despicable.”

He pops another piece of perfect cheesecake into his mouth. The Doctor definitely does not notice how full his lips look when he licks them.

“...delightful, dreamy, devilishly handsome. All words beginning with ‘d’.”

“Handsome doesn’t.”

“Are you proposing a different adjective?”

“Dickhead.”

The Master pulls away in mock outrage, clutching his hand dramatically to his chest. “I’ll have to punish you for that one.”

She shrugs and watches him push another piece of cheesecake onto his spoon. The action is so malice-filled some spills over the side.

“Stop glaring. It’s audible.” He mutters. “I’ll give you a piece if you agree that I’m handsome.”

The Doctor doesn’t hesitate.

“You’re handsome.”

The Master beams, delighted, and breaks off a small piece of cheesecake. She pouts.

“You’re very handsome?”

His smile widens into a catlike grin and she sees a larger piece of cheesecake fall onto the fork.

“You’re very very-“

“Eat the cheesecake, Doctor.”

She smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts appreciated, as always. :)


	18. eighteen: the light fantastic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breakfast, dresses and the timely arrival of a heist. More specifically a baby heist*.
> 
> *Casual misogyny, weird chatty seals and tentacle men included.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween!

40 days remaining

The Master wakes on the morning of the heist with a pounding in his head. There’s bright light shining like a thousand suns onto his eyelids and the faint scent of toast wafting from across the room.

He remembers falling asleep across the room from the Doctor, her nose deep in some circuitry. There’d been soft music playing from the record player and the cosy smell of books in the air. At one point the Doctor had turned to him and asked about a piece of wiring. Her voice had been so gentle that The Master’s eyes had drooped shut.

He can’t remember snuggling into a blanket, but there is one tucked snugly around him now. No. Not a blanket. A coat. Her coat.

Just as he is about to throw it off, there is a crash from somewhere in the room. Through his bleary vision, he can see a figure striding across the room towards him.

“Morning!” The Doctor chirps.

“Nmnnnmm.” He groans, blinking wearily in the study light. Nearly everything is out of focus without the glasses. Not that he’s going to wear them.

“Wakey wakey. Big day, remember?” She sings and, with a flourish, pulls her coat away.

Before he can protest, the Doctor has disappeared again.

The Master huffs, irritated, and pushes himself into a sitting position. The smell of toast and butter fills the air. From a separate room, a plume of heat drifts through the study. He takes a deep breath in and the richness of it almost knocks him out again. All of it is beautiful. Warm.

On the table in the middle of the room is what looks like a buffet. Gorgeous china laid neatly out, a large cafetiere in the centre and a carefully poured mug of coffee sitting in front of it. The smell is so earthy it takes him a minute to confirm he hasn’t been buried alive- not like the last time.

The Doctor emerges from the door again, carrying a plate with a pair of oven gloves. “I’ve made six different types of eggs. I thought you might be hungry.” She grins.

The Doctor cooking? Hold on.

The Master jolts upward in alarm and scans the room for fire. He frowns, seeing no damage at all. Almost as if nothing has exploded at all.

“It’s almost like you don’t trust me.” The Doctor pouts. “No damage. Look.”

She points to the door on the other side of the study that leads to the kitchen.

“How did you…?” He trails off, seeing her now wide eyes.

“Have breakfast. Please.”

They sit at opposite ends of the table. A little predictably, the Doctor is surrounded by glasses upon glasses of orange juice and appears to be drinking from several through one multi-pronged straw. She’s tearing through the breakfast like it’s the last thing she’ll ever see.

He eats cautiously, going slow so that his stomach has ample time to decide _not_ to throw the food up. The eggs are some of the best he’s ever eaten- since when did she know how to cook?- but so delicate that they feel wasted on his tongue compared to the gruel and can soup he’s been eating for the past two weeks.

It’s so light in the study. There are two artificial sunbeams shining from the slanted windows above, bathing the table in a golden sunlight. He had never known his old TARDIS to be so beautiful. At the time it had seemed like a morgue, somewhere insulated to devise new plots to stay alive as opposed to a home.

If all this has been a cruel afterlife since his execution, then he has fallen for it. For her, as he always does.

The scars on his legs are painful still, they sear and sting even as he rests them. They will stay painful for a long time, though he is getting better at walking. On top of that, the fast-healing abilities he had so heavily relied on for most of his life have slowed, unexplainedly, to a snail’s pace. It is like there is something still inside him, draining him.

He’d been awake as she’d kissed his chest, felt barely controlled rage bubble inside his gut and fought back the urge to tear new wounds into his skin. Still, the rage remains, a spark left from the wildfire. He knows he will need it again.

The Doctor stares at him as he traces the woodwork in the table. Today they need to work together. It won’t be easy, he is still angry and she is still stumbling in the dark. To find Laika, they are both going to need to control their tempers.

“Big day.” She says, unsuccessfully shoving a baton of toast into her mouth. “Everything’s fine. We’re ready for this.”

He hums, twirling a stick of Martian sanfire on his fork.

“It’s what we do all the time, right? We’ll be okay.” She babbles. “The telepathic circuit worked, the co-locator, the index chronometer. Everything worked.”

He doesn’t reply and instead they fall back into an almost companionable silence. The temptation to snark at her is strong; the amount of times they have been in a room together and not had an argument is embarrassingly low. Lately though, he has plastered over the resentment. They are on a happy though nauseatingly precarious path.

A wound flaring stops his train of thought. The Master hisses, a chunk of toast falling from his fork.

His eyes twitch upwards reflexively to see if she is looking, but the Doctor hasn’t stopped for a second in the demolishment of her breakfast.

She finishes it in just under two minutes. It takes the Master more like ten just to get through a third.

Whilst he’s eating, she takes everything off the table and carries it into the kitchen. There’s a noise after that, a clinking sort of smashing commotion that sounds altogether too aggressive to be washing. He doesn’t go to investigate.

After a while, the noise stops and she finally emerges from the kitchen with a smug smile, practically vibrating with excitement.

“What?” He probes.

The Doctor bounces over to the corner of the room and hovers in front of what looks like a small theatre curtain.

“I went through the wardrobe last night. Thought you’d want disguises” She says proudly, pulling back the curtain to reveal two matching party outfits. The Master eyebrows nearly drop off.

The one on the left is like an intergalactic army officer’s, buttons lined with silver and a knee length coat. It reminds him of something a King would wear on parade, so polished, magisterial and a far cry from the state his clothes had been in only a few days ago.

The one on the right is a dress, coloured the richest red he has ever seen. The upper body is fitted, a sweeping v-neck with two elbow length lace sleeves. At the thin waist, a red skirt billows out. It looks like a skater’s, ankle length with a neatly sewn hem at the bottom.

“Which one’s mine?” He blinks.

She points at the officer’s jacket. The Master’s eyes widen a little as he looks back at the dress.

He can imagine her twirling round and round in it, skirt billowing out, rippling as she dances in circles. He’d seen her like that in Vienna. They’d danced together but his hearts had hurt that night, beating such a heavy rhythm in his chest that it hurt to breathe. He remembers how she had balked at the dress, at such a feminine thing on her own body.

“You’re sure.”

The Doctor nods, lips pressed together with the sort of resolve that makes him think she’s been thinking about this all night. “Let’s get going. We need as much time as we can to get Laika back.”

The Master raises both of his eyebrows, blinks away some excess sleep and rises to take the disguise from its hanger. The buttons gleam in the faux sun.

When he turns around, both the dress and the Doctor have disappeared and he can hear a shuffling noise from the next room.

“Don’t come in!” She yells as her shirt comes flying out of the door.

He leaves before anything else comes off.

The Master takes the outfit to a spare bedroom and dresses quickly, despairing slightly at the lack of curlers in his past self’s TARDIS.

He doesn’t try to find a razor. Instead, the ship’s automated controls shave for him, reducing his unruly beard to O-like stubble. He keeps his hair long and instead lets the ship make it look presentable, smart but still _him_.

When he comes out, only twenty minutes have passed. He semi-expects the Doctor to be at the door, buzzing with nervous energy but she is nowhere in sight. Her presence is replaced instead by a pile of her clothes on the floor.

“Doctor?” He says into the room.

“Here.”

The Master turns around.

There, in the doorframe, she stands, red lips smirking at him.

She looks stunning. Refined in a way he has never seen this body before. Hair just long enough to be pinned back, strands falling loosely over her bare neck. The dress fits perfectly, each part sitting delicately on top of her pale skin.

The Doctor is beautiful.

“You’re staring.”

“Yeah.” He mouths breathlessly. “I am.”

“I thought you wouldn’t appreciate the corset so I didn’t try. Would get it wrong anyway. This one’s got a zip, dead good, very breezy, lots of air conditioning, this.”

“ _Yes_.” Breathes the Master, eyes roaming appreciatively.

“Come on. We need to go.” The Doctor surges forwards and drags him up, much to the disdain of his lower half. “No time like the present, ay?”

It takes them around five minutes to get the co-ordinates right after syncing up all the psychic data. They don’t argue this time and, surprisingly, the Doctor gets the landing right first time. She’s puzzled when he zones out, eyes clinging to the shape of her dancing around the console. Very, _very_ distracted.

The TARDIS lands just outside of the palace Laika’s psychic trail had led to. It’s a far-off planet neither of them know a lot about; pompous, bejewelled, generally flashy in every sense of the word. There will be a party tonight, something akin to a seasonal feast with plenty of food and dancing and strange alien things they’ll have to figure out as they go along. Luckily, the Master and his ‘plus one’ are top of the guest list. Tonight, they can stroll right up to the door and into the party without the risk of detection.

“Your excellencies.” Nods the tentacled servant at the entrance. “Come right this way. We’ve been expecting you.”

The two of them smile in unison and the Master forces an amicable smile.

They are led inside through an eccentric corridor. Gold clings to the walls in the same way bricks usually might. After around a minute, they reach a second checkpoint and another tentacled waiter bows to him.

“May I take your coat, my Lord?” Says the doorkeeper.

A little shiver of pleasure runs through him at the title. He can see the Doctor in the corner of his vision, rolling her eyes.

“No.” He says, adding a quick ‘thank you’ after feeling the Doctor’s elbow jab his ribs.

“Now, if you would kindly follow me to your table.”

The squid creature begins at a polite pace, leading them through the palace’s lavish-looking entrance lobby- the Master can’t help but think it looks a bit like The Ritz- and pushing slightly at the double doors at the end.

“My Lord and Lady. Before we enter, I must remind you that stealing or ingesting the cutlery is forbidden and that any guest found to have eaten any of the crockery will be reported immediately to security.”

The two of them nod solemnly and mutter their agreements.

“Thanking you kindly.” The waiter continues. “Now, may I present to you, the hall of Zir Majesty Tarquinius the Ninth.”

The doors swing open and a blast of hot, party air hits them full force.

For a second, they are blinded. The two of them blinking in the gleam of a thousand jewels. The hall in front of him is the most decorated room the Master has ever seen, and he’s been inside more bank vaults than he has bones in his body.

Along the sides of the hall are great pillars of Logesta marble, forest green veins branching across them, twinkling in the light of a gargantuan chandelier. There are mosaics made from jewels lining the walls, the faces of regents sparkling like suns. To the sides of the sweeping ballroom floor are hundreds of tables, packed with guests and layers upon layers of golden china.

At the top of the hall is a set of steps leading up to two identical thrones, each one shaped like a giant, golden hand. Both are unoccupied, the stage empty apart from a plush red carpet.

The Master sneaks a glance at the Doctor but finds the same stare of utter wonderment plastered across her face as well **.** The scale of it, all of it, is too much. Too lavish for only one royal family. Even for him.

If this is where Laika is being held, he hopes they’ve spent as much money on the servant’s quarters as they have on whatever _this_ is.

After a good amount of time spent staring, the two of them are buoyed into action by the stressed-looking waiter and led into the hall.

“Your dinner place has been carefully chosen by Zir Majesty’s personal psychologists to ensure maximum calculated happiness. I hope you enjoy your stay.”

Their guide scurries away, leaving them behind the seat of a Zarbi in a full piece armour suit and her pregnant wife the chair over.

The table has a gaggle of other couples seated at it who, at their arrival, break into cheery greetings and smiles. A creature pats the Doctor on the back as she walks past and the Master nearly bursts with the effort of restraint.

“Akhezba, my friends!” Booms a seal in a tux. “We are so happy to meet you. Take a seat!”

The Master pulls out an empty chair for the Doctor who tries her best not to scowl at him as she sits down.

They appear to have been seated next to the loudest guest at the party. A man- seal- who is so eager to talk to them both that the words come out twice the volume of everyone else there.

The Master pictures the baby he is trying to save, grits his teeth and talks back.

One cup of Logestan wine later, the Doctor fidgets beside him.

_We need to get away. Laika won’t be in here._

Seal man is talking animatedly to the two of them about his wife’s latest holiday, flippers flying so wildly around that he fears for the safety of the crockery. The Master is trying his best to look attentive, smiling agreeably and contributing the occasional ‘how interesting’.

_We have time to engraciate ourselves. We can’t look suspicious._ The Master replies. _Our neighbours are too talkative. If we disappear, they’ll notice._

The Doctor sends him a wave of frustration. He responds by reinforcing his shields a little and she flinches away. It was true he had wanted to have her close before but that hastiness has disappeared.

“-and then he pulled out this great big bloody pin and deflated the whole thing! And they said the Shambonis were tolerant, ey?”

The man laughs and the cups on the table jiggle in their saucers.

“What about you two then?” He gleams. “You look like a proper pair. Any kids? One on the way?” The man winks and then bursts into another laugh.

The Doctor flushes, mortified, and grabs for the napkin on the table, possibly to be sick into it. The Master nearly keels over from the force of her discomfort but manages to steady himself on the table.

“Just married.” He smiles. “Childhood sweethearts.”

“Keep her in check, lad. Don’t want them getting any ideas.”

There is an audible wince from behind him and a fresh set of fingernails clasping onto the back of his suit jacket to match.

The Master imagines what a seal would taste like. One stuffed with a deadly nerve agent perhaps, or garrotted? Seal man’s glass can’t be far away. He is sure the Doctor would object but then again…

“She’s a fantastic inventor actually.” He says instead.

“Oh, mine makes up new recipes all the time. I had this fantastic sandwich the other day-“

“Has your wife ever made a fully functioning time machine from scratch?”

The seal man shifts in his seat and chuckles nervously. The other guests at the table haven’t caught on yet, the buzz of chatter around them still noisy and intimate.

“Wouldn’t that be strange, she never comes out the kitchen! You’re a funny guy.”

“No.” Says the Master, a growl in his voice. “I am the Master. And you will obey me.”

“You… are the Master and I… will obey you.”

He can feel the Doctor’s form tense behind him, her fists clenched. The Master looks straight into his victim’s eyes and says-

“Punch yourself in the face.”

The seal man raises a flipper and, with the force of a ten-tonne truck, smashes it into the side of his face. There is an almighty crash as the chair tips to the floor, a mass of grey blubber sliding off it and collapsing in a fleshy heap.

The chatter around them drops as guests strain to catch a look. A few of them make tutting noises at the disturbance.

“Thank you.” Whispers the Doctor.

“I thought you objected to this sort of thing.” He mutters back.

A warm hand takes his and squeezes lightly before he can pull away.

“You know what I mean.”

It is a matter of seconds before a group of waiters gather around the man and begin to heave at his limbs. One of them looks at him and begins to speak-

“I think he had a little too much of the wine.” The Master says quickly. They nod in agreement.

Just as the seal starts to be dragged away, the Doctor surges forward.

“We’ll go with him.”

The tentacled waiter from earlier smiles apologetically and gestures to the small royal crest on his lapel.

“Apologies your excellencies.” The man bows slightly. “I’m afraid we can’t allow non-family members into the medical suite.”

“Oh sorry, I didn’t mention?” The Doctor grins, gesturing to the trembling heap of seal on the floor. “This is my husband’s second cousin.”

The Master gags, becoming very aware of how much he is restraining himself.

The waiter ahead of them glances between the two of them and, seeing the utter conviction on the Doctor’s face, nods slowly.

“Right this way.”

Somewhere across the banqueting hall, a gong sounds, prompting the attention of some very hungry-looking guests. As the two of them follow on behind seal-man, there is a sudden rush of people travelling the opposite way, leaving a mess of empty tables and chairs in the middle.

The door they arrive at is large and lavish, looking more than a gate for a garden than a room. The parade of serving staff trail through with the casualty, arms trembling with the strain. Seal-man grumbles in his sleep as he is dragged, rather unsuccessfully through the first door on the left.

The Doctor and the Master wait until all the waiters are inside and are just to put a foot on the floor when another alien bumbles out of the door and staggers back towards the dining hall, yelling as he goes.

“Remain here, your excellencies. We will send a servant to your aid moment-” The tentacle waiter gasps, stumbling over himself as he rushes back. “-momentarily.”

The last tentacle disappears. The Master’s eyes meet hers and without a word, the two of them take off down the corridor. His legs burning with both fresh adrenaline and what he suspects is probably new blood.

“Servant’s quarters?” He pants.

“This way. The map said this way.”

“You looked at the map?

“Sort of.”

He bites back a retort about the seal.

“Do you feel her nearby?” The Doctor asks him.

“She’s here but not close. We need to keep going.”

He absolutely _doesn’t_ spare a glance to appreciate just how good the Doctor looks in her dress. How well it fits her in a new body. She doesn’t seem uncomfortable in it either, not that it isn’t unusual to see her in something other than trousers.

The Master almost runs into a pillar. His partner in crime takes a sharp left and he has to skid to keep up. She’s running slower than usual and he doesn’t think it’s because of her outfit.

They get about the length of another corridor before she grinds to a halt ahead.

“Here.”

Over the nearest entrance is a sign saying, rather obviously, ‘Servant’s Quarters’. He wonders why anyone designing a palace would go out of their way to put a sign that blatant.

They put their backs to the wall either side of the servant’s door and slowly edge sidewards, peeping just over the threshold in almost comic timing.

“Wh-“ The Doctor croaks, losing her grip on the wall and stumbling into the doorway.

“There’s nobody.” The Master mutters. “They’ve left.”

“I don’t understand. All the castle staff have to stay within the west wing unless they’re serving. Especially the children.”

“They can’t train a baby. I’ve tried.”

The Doctor raises a disapproving eyebrow at him before stepping cautiously inside the room.

It’s spacious, a little like a hayloft but with extra embellishment. Around the space, there are odd tables and chairs from the main hall. Bags and food and cards are littered across the floor where servants have been sitting.

“Nothing. No-one.” She sighs, kicking lightly at a loose gemstone.

“I can search for her.”

“Try. I’ll stand guard.”

The Master closes his eyes and slowly, gently, lowers his shields.

He can feel the Doctor beside him, she is a blinding glow of magnetic yellow. In the light of his own mind, they look a little like the colour of space itself. In the in-between, there are tiny white spots dancing behind the back of his eyes where the Cyberium has burned through his head.

There are so many glows beyond, tiny sparks dancing around a shadowy ballroom. Each of them glowing a different rainbow colour. When he reaches further, there is a tickling around the edges of his mind. Ahead, a glistening light pours across the blackness.

It’s her, the same bright white shine he’d seen in the tunnels that day. Laika’s light shines brighter than any of them. So dazzling it nearly pierces another hole in his head. She’s close, very close in fact. If they just turned and walked a hundred metres to their right then-

His head goes black. The Master frowns, eyes easing open. Maybe they need to be a little closer?

“Something’s-“

He doubles over, choking on the rest of the sentence. A pain like a drill pierces his head.

“Can’t. I can’t-“ The breath falters in his throat and, very suddenly, the Master finds himself tumbling to the ground.

The Doctor is on him in seconds. Cradling his body gently in her arms as he gasps through the pain, there is something piercing through what little is left of his shields and it _hurts_. An agony like the Cyberium but different. Like somebody else has their hand jammed deep into his head.

“Master?” She gasps, a hand at his temples stroking gently.

“Correct.” Says a voice from the door. “But probably not the one you were expecting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As if I actually wrote a chapter! hOT DAMN look at me! This has not been proofread very well so please excuse me. 
> 
> I will be starting Nano next month with a slightly smaller goal of 600 words a day which is actually quite a lot of a challenge for me. With all the essay writing and note taking I do anyway, I estimate I go way over that total every day.


End file.
